Country & Territory Reports - Landmine Action

ordnance threat. The following examples relating to cluster
munition casualties were reported from April 2003: 970
■ Nabil Khalil, 14, was admitted to Kirkuk hospital after
playing with a yellow cluster submunition that he found
in an abandoned Iraqi army camp. He lost one hand,
suffered severe face injuries and can barely open his
eyes.
■ A crewman working to rebuild a severed power line on the
highway to Mosul stepped on a cluster submunition that
blew his leg off reported Waheed Khalid, a field
operations manager for the non-governmental Mines
Advisory Group (MAG).
■ Near the village of Dibaga, on a strategic highway linking
Kirkuk to Mosul, a girl and two adults were killed when
they tried to clear cluster bombs from a spot they had
chosen for a picnic, said shepherd Dara Mohammad […] A
week later, at least half a dozen unexploded KB-1
bomblets were still scattered around the area. Dozens
more littered a field where Masoud Samad grazes about
150 sheep. Three of the sheep were killed when they
mistook the white cloth ribbons of the submunitions for
something to eat, the shepherd said.
Further such examples were reported by Human Rights
Watch in their analysis of the conduct of the war:
■ “Explosive duds have endangered al-Hilla’s inhabitants
since moments after the battle began on March 31.
Ambulances could not enter one neighborhood to
evacuate wounded civilians because their drivers feared
running over a dud in the dark; the next morning
hundreds of injured civilians were taken to the hospital.
Three days later, in the village of al-Maimira, just
southeast of town, a dud killed Hussain Abbas, 30. “He
prayed and had dinner and went inside his house,” said
Abbas’s sister. “Suddenly there was an explosion. He
called, ‘Rihab’ [the name of his wife] and after that he
died.” Duds in al-Kifl, a little further south, sent other
civilians to al-Hilla Hospital. Thirteen year-old Falah
Hassan was injured by an unexploded DPICM on March 26
and remained in the hospital on May 19 awaiting skin
grafts. The explosion ripped off his right hand and spread
shrapnel through his body. He also lost soft tissue in his
lower limbs and his left index finger. His mother, who lay
in the hospital bed next to his, suffered injuries to her
abdomen, uterus, and large and small intestines from the
same explosion.” 971
Sources are not available for civilian accidents from
MOTAPM, but a number of Coalition force casualties have
been caused by vehicles striking anti-tank mines. 972
Although it is almost certainly the case that the ubiquitous
presence of ERW and MOTAPM affects economic activity,
little research work has been done to determine the exact
nature of this impact. The security situation in the country
makes such analysis difficult. Human Rights Watch have,
however, provided some reports on the efforts to rural
communities to work around cluster munition contamination
on their lands:
■ “… dozens of unexploded BLU-97 bomblets still covered
the field, some lying in ditches where they had fallen or
been placed by locals, others buried in the ground after
piercing the soft surface on impact. While Human
Rights Watch was investigating the site, a shepherd,
apparently oblivious to the danger, walked through with
a flock of about forty sheep and goats. They grazed
among the bomblets, and one goat nibbled grass with a
BLU between its legs. About half an hour later, while at
another part of the site, the Human Rights Watch team
heard a large explosion from the cluster bomb field,
possibly a bomblet set off by one of the animals.”
■ “DPICMs and ATACMS 973 submunitions littered farmland
in the month after the war, and in some places ... were
found in close proximity to air-dropped bomblets. ‘We
have to burn the fields. There are still bombs there. We
are growing grains for our animals,’ said the father of
Falah Hassan, the submunition victim from al-Kifl. In
May, Human Rights Watch found fields contaminated
with submunitions in villages around al-Hilla, al-Najaf,
al-Falluja, and Agargouf.” 974
Minefields and UXO pose an immediate threat to local
authorities trying to re-establish and repair the country’s
infrastructure. In one instance, people were reported to
have dumped four or five containers of explosives into a
water supply point. In another example, solid rocket fuel
was leaking into the water table. It is not known whether
these problems resulted from sabotage or accident.
UNICEF has also expressed concern that refuse collection
activities in Baghdad are being affected by the threat of
ERW. There are thought to be around 800 refuse sites in
the city that are contaminated with cluster bombs and
caches of dumped munitions. 975
According to the UNMAS Iraq Revised Humanitarian
Appeal, “The presence of explosive ordnance, mines and
unexploded ordnance (UXO) pose an immediate
humanitarian threat and will impede, if not prohibit, the
work of the United Nations’ humanitarian agencies in
these areas.” 976
However, these problems must be seen in a certain
perspective. Without improved security nationwide it will
remain very difficult to determine the impact of ERW and
MOTAPM on post-conflict society.
Efforts to address these problems 977
Poor general security has hindered all agencies attempting
mine action operations in the country. 978 An established
National Mine Action Authority exists in the country through
the Iraq Mine Action Centre (IMAC) and two Regional Mine
Action Centres (RMACs) in Basra and Erbil oversee
coordination of mine action in the country. The new IMAC has
become part of the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, recognised by
erw and motapm – global survey 2003–2004
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