Kurdistan
An anti-personnel mine from the Iran-Iraq war in Penjwen, Sulaimani province, close to the Iranian border, June 2018. File photo: Robert Edwards / Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A man died in a landmine explosion in northeast Erbil province on Monday, according to a local official.
Nasrullah Rasool, 42, from Nawanda village in the sub-district of Haji Omaran, went out of his house around 8:00 PM to collect wood for a heater when the accident occurred, Haji Omaran mayor Abdulwahab Mahmoud told Rudaw on Tuesday.
After Rasool did not return for quite some time, villagers set out to look for him and found his corpse late that night, Mahmoud added. An antipersonnel mine had injured the man, who subsequently died from blood loss.
There are tens of millions of unexploded landmines and explosive ordinances across the Kurdistan Region’s borders with Iran, more than three decades after the devastating Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988. Dozens of people are maimed or killed by the devices each year.
There are around 3,000 minefields in the Kurdistan Region, with around 13,400 mine explosion victims recorded since the 1990s, the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) Mine Action Agency confirmed to Rudaw English.
A man was killed in March in the Choman village of Pashkozi after stepping on a landmine while looking for herbs. Just weeks before, a Bradost farmer found a cache filled with more than 300 highly explosive artillery shells said to date from the Iran-Iraq war.
The Mine Action Agency, with other NGOs including the UK-based Mines Advisory Group (MAG), have cleared huge swathes of the Kurdistan Region, but their demining teams continue their work throughout the year.
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