“A young man stepped on an unknown explosive device and was killed, other people in the group were injured in the explosion.” It is not news years old, it is not distant news. It comes from the Bosnian border and is from a few days ago. Still in Europe there are unexploded ordnance and mines. April 4th is the International day against anti-personnel mines. It has been celebrated since 2005 to raise public awareness of the damage caused, especially to children, by these bombs.
The victim of this case is a young Pakistani who wanted to escape the patrolling police in the Saborsko forest. It is an area of ​​Croatia not far from the border with Bosnia where there are at least 18,000 anti-personnel mines left over from the wars in the Balkans. About ten other migrants were injured.
Croatian deminers intervened to reclaim the area and create a path to get the people involved out of the forest. In the areas of confine there are tens of thousands of anti-personnel mines, 99% of all those still not exploded. In all the Balkans there are at least 150 thousand. Since the end of the wars there have been more than 700 dead and almost 5,000 wounded and maimed.
The territory of the Syria it is a danger especially for women and children. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported by the newspaper Avvenire, in 2019 98 hunters of desert truffles, used in Middle Eastern cuisine, were killed by mines, among these there are 45 women and 6 children, but there are also many undeclared incidents. The UN with the mine action service has identified 429 contaminated areas and only along the border with Syria there would be more than 600 thousand.
The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty led to the destruction of over 55 million mines worldwide. However, the victims are still there, more than 5,500 in 2019 alone. 43% are children. Many are victims of artisanal mines. The highest number of deaths and injuries are recorded in Afghanistan, Colombia, Iraq, Mali, Nigeria, Ukraine and Yemen. These mines are produced in Europe and Italy has been the leader in this war production in the past.
To eliminate them I work the deminers, often accompanied by animals. Not only i dogs, which risk a lot. In Cambodia and Africa i ball. In the Balkans they are api to discover the bombs on minefields thanks to the work of Bosnian researchers at the University of Banja Luka who have associated the smell of TNT with sugary solutions that insects seek.
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