The booby-trapped streets are rattling Mosul, and dismantling them takes decades

The booby-trapped streets are rattling Mosul, and dismantling them takes decades

2017/07/26 18:07

Baghdad today – follow-up

A US newspaper revealed in a report on the danger posed by the booby-trapped buildings that extend over several kilometers in the streets of the city of Mosul, while referring to the possibility of “return” organization is calling again.

“There are kilometers and kilometers in Mosul, where there are devices that are active and sensitive enough to be detonated by a child and enough to blow up a truck,” the US-based Huffington Post reported .

“Improvised explosive devices in buildings are usually linked to household appliances such as refrigerators, heaters, and television, which are detonated through the keys of the doors,” McKinally said.

Since the start of the clean-up operations in October, some 1,700 people have been killed or injured by the explosives, according to the United Nations Mine Action Service, which coordinates the clearing campaign.

By targeting civilians, Da’id hopes to thwart stability efforts aimed at bringing people back to their homes, jobs and studies, rebuilding infrastructure and restoring government stability.

In turn, the acting EU mission in Iraq, Charles Stewart, said that “the Dahesh organization, which extends its strategy beyond military operations, can flourish again.”

Under the rubble

The village of Sheikh Amir is located on the main road between Erbil and Mosul on the dividing line between the Kurdish and Iraqi army control areas, abandoned and destroyed by the shelling, like hundreds of villages.

In the heat of a hot morning Hakim Hazem, 37, worked with his brother and a few friends to repair his house, mixing cement and building a wall.

Hazem said that unlike his family, another single family from the village, where 120 families of Sunnis and Shiites lived, has returned to the village since it was restored from an organization in October.

When he returned, the booby traps were spread in his home, in nearby buildings and in animal pens.

Many other houses were also sealed with improvised explosive devices. The organization also dug up tunnels in and around the village. Hazem said a team from the MAG had cleared most of them, but they remained dangerous.

Hazem said a 12-year-old boy who was caring for the sheep picked up a few weeks ago a piece of land bursting and amputating the fingers of one of his hands.

His brother, Ghassan Abbas Hazem, 35, pointed to houses destroyed by the organization and air strikes of the US-led coalition.

The two men explained that their families were living in rented rooms in Arbil and Karakush.

“There is nothing here, no school, no medicine, no water, just a well, I hope the others will return.

In Qaraqush, in the same area, members of two returning families were killed when the two cars in which they were hit exploded.

“Only one family of sheep herders lives in the village permanently,” said McKinally, operations manager for People’s Aid.

In the nearby village of Kurbli, about 20 families have returned since February after the People’s Aid teams cleared schools and homes.

Stuart, the chargé d’affaires of the EU mission, for example, hit a classroom in Falluja where explosives were planted under floorboards to kill children when they returned to their classrooms and were discovered in time.

Stuart said one of the major problems is that some people try to settle things themselves and try to clean their homes in their hands as well as playing children in the streets, making them vulnerable to falling victims of booby traps.

Disc Compressor

At the People’s Id office in Erbil, McKinally, a veteran of the US military, who was involved in clearing areas of explosive hazards in Colombia from Afghanistan, showed a package of packages, some of them made from rust-covered pieces of metal.

The most common is the two-plate Compressed Disc separated by a material that is connected to a negative pole and the other to a positive pole. When pressed by foot, the circuit closes and the main package explodes.

“This is an industrial assembly line, these people are educated and understand electronics,” McKinally said.

Bomb makers are also learning and adapting to the methods of purifiers, he said.

The Iraqi and Kurdish authorities, the United Nations and a group of NGOs and businesses are participating in the campaign against explosives. Its activity goes beyond clearing sites.

Community outreach teams provide mine awareness classes for hundreds of people.

In a school in western Mosul, which was recently reopened three years after Dahesh’s arrest, the memories of senior teacher Muhammad Hussein said children were receiving mine and explosive education lessons under the curriculum.

MAG also trains people to deal with the clearance of explosives in their communities, and trains civilians to be at the forefront of providing first aid to victims of bombings.

But bureaucracy and funding hinder progress, and clearance officials say resources are inadequate. For the year 2017, the United Nations Mine Action Service has received $ 16 million of the requested funding of $ 112 million.

The restoration of Mosul is only the latest phase of this scourge. Explosives from the Iraq-Iran war, Saddam Hussein’s war on Kurds, and the US-led war in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq are spreading in Iraq.

The militants are expected to plant explosives in new areas as they retreat towards the Syrian border.

Experts say mine clearance can take decades.

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