Millions of Mines Will Litter Iraq, Expert Says
Rome, Italy, 7 apr 03 (Reuters)
By Rachel Sanderson

“There are million of mines in Iraq. Whether it is two million or five million or eight million is impossible to say because of the lack of transparency,” Stephen Goose, director of the armaments section of Human Rights Watch, said.

Iraq is layered with mines from the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, the 1991 Gulf War and the current conflict.

Goose said mine-clearing agencies could not hope to match the targets in Kosovo, where teams aim to sweep the area of the former Yugoslavia clean within a year.

The plight of Iraq would be more comparable to Cambodia, where nearly half of villages are still either known or suspected to be littered with mines or unexploded bombs more than 20 years after the fall of the Khmer Rouge regime.

“It will take five to 10 years to clear the high priority areas in Iraq... for people to be able to move about freely and to engage in the main economic activities,” Goose told Reuters on the sidelines of a news conference on land mines. Last week, the British-based organisation Mines Advisory Group revealed Iraq had stored nearly 700 anti-personnel and anti-tank mines in a mosque.

The non-governmental organisation said Iraqi soldiers had mined villages and water supplies as they retreated from the north of the country.

BBC cameraman Kaveh Golestan was killed last week after stepping on a landmine in Kifri, northern Iraq.

Goose said it was not just the Iraqi military that posed a threat.

Landmining by U.S.-led forces could not be ruled out. He said some 90,000 mines have been shipped to the Gulf area but added that there was no evidence so far that they had been planted.

“The United States has not produced an uproar (about the use of landmines) because it reserves the right to use anti-personnel mines i this conflict,” he said.

Unexploded ordnance used by U.S. and British forces, in particular from cluster bombs, would also leave behind dangers for Iraqi civilians and aid workers.

And civilians maimed by a landmines were unlikely to receive much relief with poor healthcare services and a shortage those qualified to make prosthetic limbs, Goose said.

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