Basra, the city most saturated with landmines worldwide

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – The Directorate for Mine Action (DMA) of the Iraqi Ministry of Environment revealed that Basra came first worldwide as the city with the most landmines.

Media Director of the DMA, Mustafa Hamid, explained that the southern Iraqi city of Basra has about 1,200 square kilometers full of landmines, pointing out that areas where landmines are planted in Iraq reached six thousand square kilometers, the Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported.

Hamid confirmed that 50 percent of the areas planted with landmines was cleared, and the remaining area is 2,600 square kilometers, INA added.

Hamid also stated that the number of mine casualties reached 30 thousand.

Hamid pointed out that the DMA suffers from financial issues in terms of funding, indicating that the DMA presented projects worth more than 600 billion dinars (around 410.9 million USD) to the Ministry of Planning aiming to include them in the general budget.

Last October, two Iraqi members of a team working for the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) were killed and a third was injured in an incident at an explosive ordnance clearance site at Shatt Al-Arab near the city of Basra.

Iraq suffers from various types of contamination due to decades of war and conflicts that is now threatening the lives and safety of Iraqi communities, a statement issued by the UNMAS last November mentioned.

Iraq is the world’s most contaminated country with landmines, partly due to the mines laid by ISIS group to defend the territory it once controlled over Iraq and Syria, according to Reuters.

Iraq was already heavily contaminated as a result of the 2003 invasion by the U.S.-led coalition, the 1991 Gulf War and the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Reuters added.