ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A cache of arms filled with more than 300 highly explosive artillery shells was discovered in Erbil province's Bradost area on Tuesday.
A farmer came across the stored weapons while bulldozing land intended for a farmhouse.
They are said to date back to the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s. The area is located in the sub-district of Sidakan on the border between the two countries.
The Bradost area shares a 50 kilometer of border with Iran. During the Iraq-Iran war, the Iraqi government established one of the army’s bases in the area and planted 20 square kilometers of land with high-explosive mines and shells.
“People have been walking on the ground where these shells are buried this whole time but nothing has happened. I wanted to build a farmhouse here. While bulldozing, I saw the shells under the bulldozer’s track chains and warned the mine agency,” said farmer Mohammed Hussain.
The shells were made in Russia in 1982, and brought to the area during the war in 1983.
The demining team carefully collected the shells, and will take them to conduct more investigations in Erbil.
“We will take measures to investigate the area. We will transport all the located shells to a weapon store to defuse them," said Mukhlis Sharif, operations manager of the Iraqi Kurdistan Mine Action Agency (IKMAA) branch in Erbil.
Reporting by Bakhtiyar Qadir
