ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - A landmine suspected to be a remnant of the Iraq-Iran war killed an individual in Erbil province’s Rawanduz on Thursday, Soran Civil Defense announced.
Mohammed Hassan Hamad, 55, had gone to the highlands of Warte town, Rawanduz district to bring home spring herbs.
“The teams arrived on the scene and found the citizen unfortunately died. His dead body was retrieved and referred to the Soran morgue,” read the civil defense’s statement.
The deceased was a resident of the Esqala neighborhood, Soran.
Unexploded landmines dispersed across the Kurdistan Region’s border areas with Iran continue to be a serious threat to the lives of border villagers and picnickers, especially during spring and the hot months of the summer.
Around three million square meters of the Kurdistan Region’s mine-contaminated areas were cleared in 2024, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) mine agency, with at least four people losing their lives to the explosives during that year.
Jabbar Mustafa Rasul, head of the Mine Action Agency (IKMAA), told The New Region in January that their teams were able to clear around 2,956,000 square meters across the Kurdistan Region’s minefields last year, a slight increase from 2,803,326 square meters in 2023.
A total of “776 square kilometers of the Kurdistan Region are contaminated with mines and remnants of war, of which 559 square kilometers have been demined, and 217 square kilometers are left,” said Rasul, noting that Sulaimani province has the largest land area yet to be demined.
The mine agency has demined approximately 11 million square meters since 2019.
Around 13,500 people have been killed or injured due to landmines in the Kurdistan Region throughout the years, according to Rasul who added that anti-personnel mines make up approximately 90 percent of all the mines in the Region, while the rest are anti-tank mines.
“The mines are from the time of successive Iraqi governments until 2003, and the majority of them are from the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran, during which a large area of the Kurdistan Region became a battlefield for the major war between the two regional states,” he said.
The IKMAA director stated that most of the casualties occur during the springtime when families flock to the mountainous areas for picnics. He urged all civilians to contact the mine agency’s hotline whenever they encounter an unexploded ordnance.
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