By Sergio Cantone
- A mine costs around $2 to lay and around $1,000 to remove.
- Ukraine has more than 5 million devices despite promises to stop using them.
- No one knows how many lie buried in fields, woods and wasteland in the country’s east
On February 10, Andriy Kostenko, 45, was heading from Luhansk
towards the town of Marinka when he found his route blocked by a queue
cased by a military checkpoint.
Apparently trying to skip the line, he steered off the road and,
moments later, his Volkswagen minivan struck a landmine. Kostenko and
two passengers were killed.
Their deaths add to a civilian toll from concealed explosive devices
that has already topped 260 in less than two years of conflict between
Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian rebel groups. A further 479
non-military personal are known to have suffered serious injuries when
they ventured unaware into a minefield.
No one knows who planted most of the mines involved. The location of
many may never even have been recorded; others have been marked only on
rough sketches made by the soldiers who laid them.
Their dissemination, by thousands, marks a serious setback to
decades of international efforts to eliminate the indiscriminate
killing. Ukraine has joined 10 other nations around the world where
anti-personnel mines are still being laid – North Korea, Iraq, Syria,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Colombia, Libya, Yemen, Tunisia and Myanmar.
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Source: Euronews
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