Newspaper Article

Refugees face land mines terror; UN estimates 10 million deadly devices litter unmarked fields

Ian Bruce Geopolitics editor

2001

Overview

The United Nations estimates that anything up to 10 million mines, ranging from butterfly-shaped anti-personnel devices designed to blow off a hand, to heavy versions capable of reducing a 40-tonne tank to scrap metal, are buried or strewn in mostly unmarked fields. The approaches to the Pakistani and Iranian borders are both heavily mined. Soviet engineers laid them thickly on known mujahideen infiltration routes, hoping to block supplies of weapons and ammunition to the insurgents. They also scattered small surface devices from helicopters. Often, these were shaped like toys. Butterflies were the main configuration and the principal casualties, predictably, were children. Alliance fighters clinging to trenches protecting vital supply lines into Tajikistan across the Amur River have planted mines by the thousands to compensate for their lack of numbers and to try to channel attacking Taliban troops into \"killing zones\" covered by scarce mortars and machine-guns.

• Publisher: Gannett Media Corp