Floods Could Spread Mines Hundreds Of Miles

When the flood waters recede in the Balkans another danger will remain.

The record high floods have triggered landslides, some in areas which were minefields during the Bosnian war of 1992-95. 

The landslides have dislodged some of the munitions which are now in unmarked places or have been washed into rivers. In some cases the mine warning signs have been washed away.

During the war about a million land mines were planted. Since then a clearance scheme has destroyed most of them but almost 120,000 remain in more than 9,000 marked minefields. The munitions have killed 601 people since 1995.

An official at Bosnia's Mine Action Center, Sasa Obradovic, said: "Mines have surfaced now in areas where they have never been,"  Bosnia has suffered more than 2,000 landslides since the crisis began last week.

This could create a more widespread problem downstream from the tributaries of the Sava river in Bosnia.

A Bosnian Serb soldier dismantles an anti-personnel mine in Gorazde in 1993

The river flows along the border with Croatia and then meets the Danube just outside Belgrade in Serbia. That in turn flows down through Bulgaria and Romania and into the Black Sea.

Experts fear that some mines could travel hundreds of miles or even become jammed in the machinery of a hydroelectric dam.

Mine clearing is a hugely expensive business. A landmine can be bought for a few dollars, but the UN estimates that it costs about $1,000 per mine to clear them once they are placed in a mine field.

As well as causing thousands of fatalities in countries no longer at war, their presence renders large areas of often agricultural land unusable for years after a conflict has ended.

Hundreds of thousands are still to be recovered and remain a daily threat in Angola, Somalia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Chad, Vietnam, Thailand, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, Iraq  and many other countries.

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Floods Could Spread Mines Hundreds Of Miles

Dengan url

http://jidatlancip.blogspot.com/2014/05/floods-could-spread-mines-hundreds-of.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Floods Could Spread Mines Hundreds Of Miles

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Floods Could Spread Mines Hundreds Of Miles

sebagai sumbernya