RASC News Agency: Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General, has announced that 800 people have lost their lives in the past year due to landmine explosions and other unexploded ordnance in Afghanistan. In a message posted on the social network X on Tuesday, May 21, Lacroix stated, “I recently returned from Afghanistan, where I witnessed the horrific impact of explosives on communities.”
Lacroix highlighted the urgent need for sustainable solutions to clear unexploded ordnance, noting that hundreds of thousands of unexploded explosives remain from the country’s years of conflict. The UN official added that, over the past year, landmine explosions and other remnants of war have primarily victimized children. On Wednesday, May 15, Jean-Pierre Lacroix traveled to Kabul as part of a peacekeeping mission aimed at raising awareness about the dangers posed by unexploded wartime ordnance.
According to Bakhtar News Agency, under the Taliban administration, Hamidullah Nisar, the Taliban’s Head of Information and Culture in Ghazni province, reported that a landmine explosion on Sunday evening, April 1, in the Giro district, claimed the lives of 11 children.
The United Nations estimates that three million people in Afghanistan live within a one-kilometer radius of landmines, improvised explosive devices, and other unexploded remnants of war.
