EGYPT: Sinai landmines pose deadly risk to locals.

Record ID: 803964

  • Title: EGYPT: Sinai landmines pose deadly risk to locals.
  • Date: 28th June 2012
  • Summary: EXTERIOR OF THE AL-ARISH BRANCH OF THE ARAB MEDICAL UNION (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) PROJECT MANAGER AT THE AL-ARISH BRANCH OF THE ARAB MEDICAL UNION, MOHAMMED ISMAIL, SAYING: "The union's office in al-Arish is aiming to organise workshops and awareness seminars. We also plan on visiting the landmine-plagued areas and educating the people to understand the magnitude of these l
  • Embargoed: 13th July 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Egypt
  • Country: Egypt
  • Topics: Conflict
  • Reuters ID: LVA79AG3N1E0P9OUNTJKYT2YTVEM
  • Story Text: What should be an ordinary game of football becomes extremely dangerous when the game is played near lethal weapons -- millions of landmines laid mostly by foreign armies which continue to plague Egyptian civilians with their deadly legacy.
    Egypt's Sinai Peninsula is littered with landmines, planted by the Egyptian and Israeli armies during the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars.
    The country's Western Desert, too, is infested with landmines leftover from British, German and Italian armies in World War II.
    Difficult to sight but extremely sensitive to the touch, the explosive device is generally placed under or near the ground and is easily set off. When triggered, it causes a large explosion killing its victims and maiming its survivors. But to the residents of al-Arish in Sinai, the threat of death is just another part of daily life.
    Ten-year-old Omar Nassir is one of many children living next to a zone peppered with landmines. Although surrounded by them, Omar did not recognise a landmine when he came across one.
    "I found some metal and started playing with it and it blew up. My dad was sitting with someone under a palm tree and he heard me screaming, I fell to the floor and called out for him. My dad found me and screamed, they all carried me and took me to the hospital," Omar said.
    Omar lost the bottom half of his right arm and endured multiple injuries and disfiguration across his body. His father Nassir Suleiman heard the explosion, and says he only reacted when he heard his son's cries.
    Nassir blames the army for years of negligence.
    "What's supposed to be done is a complete sweeping of the areas infested with landmines. We are the only village that is completely surrounded by landmines, from south to west of the village and they're as obvious as the sun," said Suleiman, who spent around 7,000 Egyptian pounds for his son's rehabilitation.
    Earlier this year, Egypt's National Security Committee called for a national project to remove mines, including mines on 450,000 acres of land in Sinai. The precise locations for the landmines are not known.
    According to Egypt's State Information Service, landmines in the Sinai and the Western Desert have killed over 3,000 people and injured over 4,000 others in the last 25 years.
    Samir Abdel Fattah, head of plastic surgery at al-Arish General Hospital, says that landmine injuries can be devastating and survivors will never quite recover.
    "We carry out all of these procedures for free at the hospital. But when there's a patient that has suffered a laceration in an arm, the operation required to fix the nerves in the arm takes around 8 to 12 hours and even then it still will not go back to normal. After the operation, they need at least six months of physical therapy or rehabilitation. Prosthetics will never be like natural limbs and they won't be able to live their lives with it. It will act as a substitution, yes, but they are still very expensive and it will never be like a natural limb," he said.
    Landmines planted in wartime as a weapon meant to target enemy forces now indiscriminately kill ordinary Egyptian civilians and render 10 percent of the country's total cultivatable land useless.
    Like Omar, Ahmed Eid also survived a landmine explosion. The 14-year-old boy was playing football when he unknowingly came across a landmine.
    "I was playing football and I saw a piece of metal on the ground, I picked it up and it exploded in my hand. This was around 6 months ago, in December," Ahmed said.
    Mohammed Ismail, the project manager at the al-Arish branch of the Arab Medical Union, says that raising community awareness is a proactive way of dealing with the problem.
    "The union's office in Arish is aiming to organise workshops and awareness seminars. We also plan on visiting the landmine-plagued areas and educating the people to understand the magnitude of these landmines, the areas they exist and the extent of their damage so as avoid them."
    According to official Egyptian sources, there are up to an estimated 23 million landmines in Egypt - amounting to 20 percent of the world's total. The Egyptian government has said removal of landmines is a 'major priority' for the country, but that a lack of minefield maps for all the affected areas blocks progress, further hampered with a lack of appropriate funds.
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