The 48-year-old man from the village of Joshan was taken to a nearby hospital where his leg was amputated, according to state-run IRNA news agency. The village is near Saqqez, located about 100 kilometers northwest of Sulaimani in the Kurdistan Region.
The victim had stepped on a landmine left over from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, according to a local official.
Mohsen Rajaba, the councilor of Joshan village, said people have been warned not to trespass in the abandoned bases.
Around 360 areas have been demined in Saqqez since 1990, according to IRNA.
Iranian officials have acknowledged landmines are a lingering problem especially in the five provinces bordering Iran, according to an Atlantic Council report in August 2016; however, the same report claimed Iran continues to plant mines “as a means of combating smuggling and terrorism.”
Additionally natural conditions and the randomness with which mines were placed makes removal efforts futile.
“One of Iran’s major challenges in the landmine clean-up effort is the lack of maps showing where mines have been planted,” the report stated. “Iraqis planted mines irregularly during the war and some mines shifted in their locations because of flooding. This makes the clean-up process much harder.”
