ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Over 2,100 square kilometers of land in Iraq is still contaminated with landmines and remnants from wars fought over the past half century, an official from the country’s mine agency told Rudaw on Saturday. More than 200 square kilometers of that are in the Kurdistan Region.
“The remaining [uncleared] area is now more than 2,100 square kilometers in Iraq as a whole, out of a total of more than more than 6,450 square kilometers identified in 2003,” Mustafa Hameed, media director at the Iraqi Directorate of Mine Action, told Rudaw’s Mushtaq Ramadhan.
More than 57 percent of the contaminated land has been cleared, with almost half of that in southern Basra province, Hameed said.
In the Kurdistan Region, over 200 square kilometers of land is contaminated with landmines and remnants and Hameed said his agency is coordinating with the Region.
“We are in the process of signing a memorandum of understanding and a cooperation document with the Kurdistan Region soon in this field,” said Hameed, stressing that the Iraqi directorate is a national institution responsible for all mines in Iraq.
Lezma Fuad Sabir, the media director at the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Mine Action Agency (IKMAA), told Rudaw English's Azhi Rasul on Saturday that currently in the Kurdistan Region, 257 square kilometers of contaminated land remains. Clearing of an identified 776 square kilometers began in the Kurdistan Region in 1992.
Iraq and the Kurdistan Region suffer from large numbers of landmines that remain scattered across the country from the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the 1991 Gulf War, the 2003 invasion by the United States-led coalition, and the occupation by the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014.
The mines continue to claim lives and leave people with life-long injuries. According to Hameed, more than 30,000 people have been killed and left injured in Iraq since they began de-mining in 2003.
A report from the United Nations in 2022 said that more than 519 children had been killed or injured in Iraq in the previous five years from explosive ordnance, and that landmines and explosive remnants of war remain one of the leading threats to children in the country.
The 1997 convention to ban landmines, known as the Ottawa Treaty, has been signed by 133 countries, including Iraq, which signed on in 2007.
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