Dozens in Syria killed by landmines as families return home

A dozen children and a family returning home for the first time in years were among 80 civilians killed in Syria by landmines or explosives since the fall of Bashar Al Assad on December 8, a charity has said.

The Halo Trust has warned that civilians in the war-torn country are facing an unprecedented threat from millions of mines and other discarded munitions as they return to towns and villages they fled during the civil war.

There is as yet no comprehensive information about the location of minefields left behind by all the warring parties. Particularly at risk are children playing in areas where mines or the presence of other explosives have not been identified.

The UK-based Halo Trust, the world’s largest landmine clearance charity, has now revealed that two children were killed by mines while picking olives in the north-western province of Idlib. A family of three returning to check the state of their home they had left as result of the fighting were also killed by a landmine, said the charity.

Mouiad Alnofaly, Halo’s operations manager in Syria, told The National despite the end of the civil war, there was still danger from “millions of mines and unexploded munitions”, leaving a “deadly legacy which will kill and maim for generations to come”.

“As people return to their homes to be reunited with their loved ones, they are not aware where the dangerous areas are and the number of people who are returning or planning to return is in the hundreds of thousands,” he said. “Millions have been made homeless. I myself was exiled and did not see my family for many years."

Mr Alnofaly said he "can’t describe the terrible feeling” when he sees his fellow Syrians being killed at a time of relative hope for the country.

He said 100 minefields had already been discovered on the front line of previous fighting and “there were already terrible incidents on a daily basis due to unexploded ordnance in which whole families were killed because their child mistook a grenade for a valuable scrap metal”.

“Children are not aware of the hazards and the areas that are contaminated, so they try to play in their gardens but unfortunately most of the areas with mines are unknown to them,” he said. “So we’ve started risk education with schools but we don’t have the capacity to cover the whole country.”

People trying to sell what they think is scrap metal but which turns out to be munitions has been another cause of deaths.

The UN says about a third of the population of Syria are affected by some form of explosives contamination, with the highest percentages in the governorates of Quneitra, Suweida, Rural Damascus, Aleppo, Idlib, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, Deraa and Damascus.

A total of 3,353 civilians, including 889 children, are known to have been killed by anti-personnel landmines in Syria since 2011, the Syrian Network for Human Rights revealed last year.

The Halo Trust has set up an emergency hotline that allows people to report finding discarded landmines and other suspicious explosive objects that might kill or maim them. The charity is appealing for donations to help it train thousands of Syrians in demining.

Mr Alnofaly said Halo estimates that a demining and explosive ordnance disposal operation of $40 million a year would save thousands of lives and help restore the shattered Syrian economy. “Safe demining costs money,” he said. "It’s not a huge price to pay for such a prize."

The UK-based Halo Trust was founded in 1988 and employs 13,000 deminers in more than 30 countries, including Ukraine, Afghanistan, Angola and Yemen.

The charity’s highest-profile supporter was Princess Diana, who captured global attention when she walked through a live minefield in Angola in January 1997. Prince Harry retraced her steps during a visit to Africa in 2019.