“Rain and flash floods always create problems for us. We had areas that were cleared from mines, but the floods have carried mines from other areas to them and we need to clear them again,” Muhsin Sheikh Abdulkarim, head of Sulaimani’s mine affairs directorate, told Rudaw’s Soran Hussein on Sunday.
A torrential downpour battered the Kurdistan Region last week, causing flooding in many areas, with rainwater sweeping through houses and shops and causing material damage. Three people lost their lives as a result of flooding in Duhok.
Abdulkarim warned tourists and picnickers not to go near banks of streams and rivers in mountainous areas suspected of being contaminated with landmines.
Bones, barbed wires, piles of stones, painted stones, and forests without walkways are considered danger signs for landmines, according to the official.
There are countless unexploded landmines and ordinances littered across the Kurdistan Region’s border with Iran. They were planted more than three decades ago during the devastating Iraq-Iran war of 1980 to 1988. Over 13,000 people have been victims of these landmines since the 1990s, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Mine Action Agency.
At least three border guards were killed due to a landmine explosion at an Iraqi border guard command in Erbil earlier this month.
More than 5 million square meters of the Kurdistan Region’s minefields have been cleared of landmines since 2019, according to the mine agency.
Disastrous flash floods during the rainy fall and winter seasons have become a common occurrence in the Kurdistan Region in recent years, leading to deaths and large amounts of damage.
