[CPEO-MEF] MUNITIONS, GLOBAL: "Afghans live in peril among unexploded Nato bombs that litter countryside"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Afghans live in peril among unexploded Nato bombs that litter  
countryside
Ordnance left by parting international troops kills or injures about  
40 people a month – the vast majority children


by Sune Engel Rasmussen
Guardian (UK)
January 29, 2015

International troops pulling out of Afghanistan have left behind a  
lethal legacy of unexploded bombs and shells that are killing and  
maiming people at a rate of more than one a day. The vast majority  
are children.

Bombs dropped from the air coupled with munitions left behind in  
makeshift firing ranges in rural Afghanistan have made parts of the  
countryside perilous for locals who are used to working the land for  
subsistence and raw materials.

Since 2001, the coalition has dropped about 20,000 tonnes of  
ammunition over Afghanistan. Experts say about 10% of munitions do  
not detonate: some malfunction, others land on sandy ground. Foreign  
soldiers have also used valleys, fields and dry riverbeds as firing  
ranges and left them peppered with undetonated ammunition.

Statistics from the UN-backed Mine Action Coordination Centre of  
Afghanistan (Macca) show there were 369 casualties in the past year,  
including 89 deaths. The rate rose significantly in October and  
November when 93 people were injured, 84 of them children. Twenty died.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/29/afghans-lives-in-peril- 
unexploded-bombs

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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