1.6 million Iraqis suffer from mines – UNAMI

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The UN Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) said that 1.6 million Iraqis suffer from unexploded land mines in Iraq, according to an official statement of the UN mission. “Iraqi environment ministry and the United Nations held on Tuesday a press conference on fighting land mines in Iraq,” said the statement received by IraqiNews.com news agency. Twenty-five percent of the world’s unexploded land mines are buried in Iraq, making it one of the most contaminated countries, the environment ministry said. More than 20 million mines are scattered in the war-plagued nation, deputy environment minister Kamal Hussein Latif said. “That has become a heavy legacy on the country that hobbles its economy and health,” Latif told reporters in Baghdad. “They were planted randomly and no maps were left from the previous regime,” Latif said. The mines have affected development — particularly in the oil sector because so many mines were laid in the northern Kurdish region, around major oil infrastructure. Iraq will likely clear about 70 percent of the mines by 2018, but the process is slow because of staff shortages and other problems, Latif said. The Ministry of Defense is in charge of clearance, with help from about 20 private companies and a handful of non-governmental organizations. According to the U.N. figures, the contaminated sites cover an estimated 1,730 square kilometers (668 sq. miles) and affect around 1.6 million people. Land mines and unexploded ordinance killed or injured an average of two Iraqis every week in 2009, the U.N. says. Eighty percent of them were young men, aged 15 to 29 years. SH (TS) 389