DM Monitoring
Ghazni: The black mushroom cloud had barely faded in Ghazni province before kids clustered around the edge of the crater created by the mine, one of the devices that kills a child every other day in Afghanistan.
Afghans have been able to return to fields, schools and roads since the Taliban authorities ended their insurgency and ousted the Western-backed government in 2021. But with new freedom of movement comes the danger of remnants left behind after 40 years of successive conflicts.
Nearly 900 people were killed or wounded by leftover munitions from January 2023 to April this year alone, most of them children, according to UN figures. The anti-tank mine had been 100 metres from Qach Qala village, south of the provincial capital Ghazni, since the Soviet invasion from 1979 to 1989.
Deminers from the British organisation Halo Trust cautiously unearthed then detonated it, the explosion echoing three kilometres (nearly two miles) around. But before it was set off, a Taliban member roared up to the deminers on his motorcycle. “Give me that mine!” he demanded.
“I’ll keep it safe at home. We can use it later when Afghanistan is occupied again.”
