|
|
|
|
National Tree Day Planet Ark Home
|
|
|
||
|
Sri Lanka Aims to be Rid of Landmines by End-2008 |
||
|
Mail this story to a friend | Printer friendly version
|
||
| SRI LANKA: March 8, 2006 | ||
|
COLOMBO - Sri Lanka has removed more than half a million landmines sown in the island's north and east during two decades of civil war, and aims to clear the other half by the end of 2008, the government said on Tuesday.
|
||
|
Swathes of farm land are still off limits in both government and rebel-held areas in the far north because so-called plastic blast mines from Pakistan and China - designed to blow the leg of the immediate victim - can still go off years later. "More than 50 percent of landmines out of one million have been cleared so far with the assistance of the international NGO's and the Sri Lanka Army," M.S Jayasinghe, Secretary of the Ministry of Nation Building and Development, told a news conference. "All the landmines in Sri Lanka will be cleared by the end of 2008," he added. Most of the blast mines were laid in Jaffna in the far north, and along the main A9 road that runs south through the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebel stronghold of Kilinochchi. There are few of the deadlier fragmentation mines - used widely in Kosovo, Mozambique and Angola - which send shrapnel spinning in a much wider radius and can kill or maim several people in one go. There are 2,500 de-miners working in the field, but some international demining groups were forced to cut back their operations amid an upsurge in violence and unrest in December and January that raised fears of a return to war. A 2002 truce is still holding, but some deminers fear that their work could be undone if talks between the government and rebels fail and the foes resume a war that has already killed more than 64,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
|
||
|
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
|
||
|
