Sudan conflict raises familiar specter of a landmine-contaminated wasteland

Sudan and South Sudan are among the nations most impacted by unexploded ordnance. (UNMAS)
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Updated 31 January 2024
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Sudan conflict raises familiar specter of a landmine-contaminated wasteland

  • Social media posts and recent tragedy suggest use of device becoming more common by warring sides
  • Indiscriminate weapon and other unexploded ordnance make no distinction between combatants and civilians

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania: Ten Sudanese civilians were killed on Jan. 20 when the bus they were traveling in struck a land mine on a road in Al-Jazirah state, south of Sudan’s capital Khartoum, where fighting between rival military factions has been ongoing since April last year.

The tragedy’s aftermath was marked by a deafening silence from the warring parties, the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces. However, the incident, reportedly the first of its kind in this war, has revealed a perilous new reality for Sudan.

The UN Mine Action Service is yet to examine the site of the blast, so the type of explosive device used has not been confirmed. Social media users in Sudan, however, say the use of antipersonnel land mines is becoming more common, posing a deadly new threat to civilians.

“Prior to the onset of the ongoing crisis, the UN assisted victims of land mines and other explosive remnants of war,” Mohammad Sediq Rashid, head of the Sudan Mine Action Programme and part of the UN peace operation, told Arab News.




As Sudan absorbs the worrying precedent set by the Jan. 20 bus tragedy, its struggle is all too familiar elsewhere in the region. (AFP/File)

“Since the conflict started, we have been driving awareness-raising campaigns among internally displaced people, refugees, and frontline humanitarian actors by alerting the risks and promoting safe behaviors.”

The vehicle caught in the explosion was reportedly transporting passengers from the east of the state, seized by the RSF in late December, to Shendi, a small town in River Nile state, known for its ancient pyramids.

Since there is no history of land mines being used in this area, allegations are circulating on social media suggesting that the device may have been planted relatively recently by the SAF in a bid to frustrate the RSF advance into the region.

Given the inability to independently verify what took place, it is impossible to apportion blame. However, if more of these devices have been planted across Al-Jazirah and elsewhere, bitter experience suggests this tragedy will not be the last.

Produced for as little as a dollar, these indiscriminate weapons make no distinction between combatants and civilians, remaining primed in the earth for several decades, long after a conflict has ended.

The devastating impact of land mines and other unexploded ordnance extends beyond the immediate toll on lives and limbs. They can impede communities’ access to valuable land, hindering agricultural activities and the construction of essential facilities such as hospitals and schools.




Produced for as little as a dollar, these indiscriminate weapons make no distinction between combatants and civilians. (UNMAS)

Rashid says education is a critical part of the land mine response. “Children, in particular, are vulnerable, drawn to the curious appearance of remnants without fully grasping the danger,” he said.

And the impact of antipersonnel land mines exploding can be long lasting. “The consequences encompass not only physical injuries but also psychological trauma, economic deprivation, and social exclusion,” he added.

In the global context, approximately 61 countries and regions are currently grappling with the persistent threat of land mine contamination, exposing thousands of individuals to the daily risk of life-changing injuries and death.

Among those nations, Sudan stands out as one of the most severely impacted by antipersonnel land mines and unexploded ordnance, according to UN classification.

Unlike China, India, Pakistan, Russia and the US, Sudan has ratified the 1997 Ottawa Treaty, commonly referred to as the Mine Ban Treaty. However, successive Sudanese governments have failed to meet their obligations under the convention.

Antipersonnel land mines have been used by combatants in Sudan across multiple conflicts. During these periods of protracted strife, all parties involved have deployed these devices, leaving behind a legacy of contamination.




Sudan stands out as one of the most severely impacted by antipersonnel land mines and unexploded ordnance, according to UN classification. (UNMAS)

Before the current crisis, marked by more than 13,000 reported fatalities, Sudan had begun the arduous task of clearing land mines. But with a contaminated area encompassing more than 172 million square meters of land, it took more than two decades to clear just 80 percent of them.

Now this latest bout of violence has introduced further contamination, extending the demining timeline, with experts estimating that the time needed to eliminate all explosive ordnance in Sudan could take generations.

The complexity deepens when mines are planted in urban areas. Towns and cities, which will be vital for the post-conflict recovery, will face a daunting task of clearing explosive remnants after the war ends.

Given that much of Sudan’s demining focus has been on rural areas, additional training will be needed to handle urban clearance operations.

Similarly, in South Sudan, which declared independence from Sudan in 2011, unexploded ordnance continues to maim and kill despite commendable efforts to remove it.

“Our communities have learned to live with the land mines and have learned how to avoid them; yet land mines still continue to damage human lives, animals and vegetation,” Suzanne Jambo, a South Sudanese political analyst, told Arab News.

Moreover, unexploded ordnance complicates the already challenging delivery of humanitarian aid and commercial goods.




Sudan plunged into chaos after monthslong tensions between the military, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, left, and the Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, exploded into open fighting last April. (AFP/File)

Mukesh Kapila, the former UN representative in Sudan, who previously spearheaded an initiative to demine major roads leading to South Sudan, emphasized “the critical nature of such programs for the secure repatriation of refugees from neighboring countries.”

Given that Sudan has seen the displacement of some 1.4 million people across its borders since mid-April, many of them seeking safety in Chad, South Sudan, and Egypt, reinstating such demining efforts has become imperative.

“Back then, we faced the challenge of reinforcing UN aid vehicles with ballistic blankets before dispatching food convoys,” Kapila told Arab News. “In the Nuba Mountains, the land mines were basic and manufactured within Sudan using Iranian technology.”

FASTFACTS

• 13,000 Sudan death toll estimated by the ACLED project.

• 10 months of fighting as of January between SAF and RSF.

• 10.7m people forced from their homes since April 2023 (IOM).

The international community, through organizations like UNMAS, has historically played a role in assisting victims of explosions of land mines and other remnants of war.

Rehabilitation efforts encompass medical support, vocational training, and community sensitization.

However, the ongoing conflict in Sudan has added layers of complexity to the situation. Hospitals and essential service providers, already strained by violence, face challenges in offering assistance.

The vulnerability of land mine victims has intensified as humanitarian access becomes increasingly challenging.

The picture is similar in other parts of the Arab world where conflict has left the land saturated with explosive remnants.

Maj. Gen. A.K. Bardalai, a former deputy head of mission and deputy force commander of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, said one of the main challenges is accurately identifying the affected areas and the quantity of mines.

“In the absence of records, clearing agencies must proceed cautiously, making the process time-consuming and laborious,” he told Arab News. “Determining precise timelines for complete demining in Africa is also challenging.”

Drawing on his experience in Lebanon, where cluster munitions were left over from fighting with Israel, Bardalai said demining efforts can take decades, even when combatants supply clearance teams with detailed records of where antipersonnel land mines were planted and ordnance fell.

When these records are not provided or not made at all, then clearance operations can take even longer.




The UN Mine Action Service is yet to examine the site of the Jan. 20 blast in Al-Jazirah state. (UNMAS)

As Sudan absorbs the worrying precedent set by the Jan. 20 bus tragedy, its struggle is all too familiar elsewhere in the region. The parallel experiences of Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Gaza underscore the universal challenges posed by land mines.

The Mines Advisory Group, a British nongovernmental organization, says Gaza faces years of clearance work due to the density of unexploded ordnance. The West Bank, too, has suffered more than 60 years of land mine contamination.

Unless a lasting ceasefire can be reached between the SAF and RSF, Sudan will no doubt see further contamination, setting back its recovery by decades and putting future generations at risk.

 


Israel to ease domestic restrictions imposed due to Iran war: minister

Updated 3 sec ago
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Israel to ease domestic restrictions imposed due to Iran war: minister

Katz approved the changes for most of the country starting Wednesday evening

JERUSALEM: Israel will ease domestic restrictions imposed on its population due to the ongoing war with Iran and will “reopen its economy,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday.

“While we continue our intense fight against Iran until the threats are removed, we will also reopen the economy, ease restrictions, and restore Israel to paths of creativity, activity, and security,” Katz was quoted as saying in a statement after approving the changes for most of the country starting Wednesday evening.

At least 51 Palestinians killed while waiting for aid trucks in Gaza, health officials say

Updated 4 min 33 sec ago
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At least 51 Palestinians killed while waiting for aid trucks in Gaza, health officials say

  • OCHA said the people killed were waiting for food rations arriving in UN convoys
  • Yousef Nofal, an eyewitness, said he saw many people motionless and bleeding on the ground after Israeli forces opened fire

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: At least 51 Palestinians were killed and more than 200 wounded in the Gaza Strip while waiting for UN and commercial trucks to enter the territory with desperately needed food, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry and a local hospital.

Palestinian witnesses told The Associated Press that Israeli forces carried out an airstrike on a nearby home before opening fire toward the crowd in the southern city of Khan Younis.

The Israeli military said soldiers had spotted a gathering near an aid truck that was stuck in Khan Younis, near where Israeli forces were operating. It acknowledged “several casualties” as Israelis opened fire on the approaching crowd and said authorities would investigate what happened.

The shooting did not appear to be related to a new Israeli- and US-supported aid delivery network that rolled out last month and has been marred by controversy and violence.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs, or OCHA, said the people killed were waiting for food rations arriving in UN convoys.

Also on Tuesday, the main Palestinian telecoms regulatory agency based in the West Bank city of Ramallah reported that Israeli strikes had cut off fixed-line phone service and Internet access in central and southern Gaza.

‘Aren’t we human beings?’

Yousef Nofal, an eyewitness, said he saw many people motionless and bleeding on the ground after Israeli forces opened fire. “It was a massacre,” he said, adding that the soldiers continued firing on people as they fled from the area.

Mohammed Abu Qeshfa reported hearing a loud explosion followed by heavy gunfire and tank shelling. “I survived by a miracle,” he said.

The dead and wounded were taken to the city’s Nasser Hospital, which confirmed 51 people had been killed. Later Tuesday, medical charity MSF raised the death toll to 59, saying that another 200 had been wounded while trying to receive flour rations in Khan Younis.

Samaher Meqdad was at the hospital looking for her two brothers and a nephew who had been in the crowd.

“We don’t want flour. We don’t want food. We don’t want anything,” she said. “Why did they fire at the young people? Why? Aren’t we human beings?”

Palestinians say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire on crowds trying to reach food distribution points run by a separate US and Israeli-backed aid group since the centers opened last month. Local health officials say scores have been killed and hundreds wounded.

In those instances, the Israeli military has acknowledged firing warning shots at people it said had approached its forces in a suspicious manner.

Deadly Israeli airstrikes continued elsewhere in the enclave on Tuesday. Al-Awda Hospital, a major medical center in northern Gaza, reported that it has received the bodies of eight Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike on a house in the central Bureij refugee camp.

Desperation grows as rival aid systems can’t meet needs

Israel says the new system operated by a private contractor, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, is designed to prevent Hamas from siphoning off aid to fund its militant activities.

UN agencies and major aid groups deny there is any major diversion of aid and have rejected the new system, saying it can’t meet the mounting needs in Gaza and that it violates humanitarian principles by allowing Israel to control who has access to aid.

Experts have warned of famine in the territory that is home to some 2 million Palestinians.

The UN-run network has delivered aid across Gaza throughout the 20-month Israel-Hamas war, but has faced major obstacles since Israel loosened a total blockade it had imposed from early March until mid-May.

UN officials say Israeli military restrictions, a breakdown of law and order, and widespread looting make it difficult to deliver the aid that Israel has allowed in.

Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for OCHA, said on Tuesday that the aid Israeli authorities have allowed into Gaza since late May has been “woefully insufficient.”

Fuel has not entered Gaza for over 100 days, she said. “The only way to address it is by sufficient volumes and over sustained periods of time. A trickle of aid here, a trickle of aid there is not going to make a difference.”

Israel’s military campaign since October 2023 has killed over 55,300 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. Its count doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Israel launched its campaign aiming to destroy Hamas after the group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 251 hostage.

The militants still hold 53 hostages, fewer than half of them alive, after most of the rest were released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.


Iran’s Khamenei rejects Trump’s call for unconditional surrender

Updated 18 June 2025
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Iran’s Khamenei rejects Trump’s call for unconditional surrender

  • ‘The Americans should know that any US military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage’

DUBAI/JERUSALEM: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement read by a television presenter on Wednesday that his country will not accept US President Donald Trump’s call for an unconditional surrender.

In his first remarks since Friday, when he delivered a speech broadcast on state media after Israel began bombarding Iran, Khamenei said peace or war could not be imposed on the Islamic Republic.

“Intelligent people who know Iran, the Iranian nation, and its history will never speak to this nation in threatening language because the Iranian nation will not surrender,” he said.

“The Americans should know that any US military intervention will undoubtedly be accompanied by irreparable damage.”

Thousands of people were fleeing Tehran on Wednesday after Israeli warplanes bombed the city overnight, and a source said Trump was considering options that include joining Israel in attacking Iranian nuclear sites.

Israel’s military said 50 Israeli jets had struck around 20 targets in Tehran overnight, including sites producing raw materials, components and manufacturing systems for missiles.

A source familiar with internal discussions said Trump and his team were considering a number of options, which included joining Israel in strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.

Iran had conveyed to Washington that it would retaliate against the United States for any direct participation, its ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, said. He said he already saw the US as “complicit in what Israel is doing.”


Israeli army drone downed over Iran

Updated 18 June 2025
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Israeli army drone downed over Iran

  • Iranian state television broadcast pictures of the wreckage of what it said was an armed Israeli Air Force Hermes drone in the central city of Isfahan

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said Wednesday that one of its drones had been downed while operating over Iran, the first such loss it has acknowledged since the start of hostilities last week.

An army statement said the drone had gone down in Iran after being hit by a surface-to-air missile.

“No injuries were reported and there is no risk of an information breach,” it added.

Iranian state television broadcast pictures of the wreckage of what it said was an armed Israeli Air Force Hermes drone in the central city of Isfahan.

The Israeli air force has been launching daily raids on Iran since last Friday, with the country targeting missile sites in particular along with other military and nuclear-related sites.

Military spokesman Effie Defrin insisted that Israel was “operating freely” over Iran with air strikes that have involved “dozens of aircraft of various types.”

“We will continue to strike anywhere within Iran that we choose. Yes, there is resistance, but we control the skies and will continue to maintain that control,” he told a televised press briefing on Wednesday.

The Israeli military said on Monday it had achieved “total air superiority in the skies over Tehran.”

More than 50 Israeli Air Force fighter jets carried out air strikes in the Tehran area on Wednesday morning, targeting a production facility for uranium enrichment centrifuges among other locations, according to an earlier statement from the military.


Iran will respond firmly if US becomes directly involved in Israeli strikes, says UN ambassador

Updated 18 June 2025
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Iran will respond firmly if US becomes directly involved in Israeli strikes, says UN ambassador

  • Iran’s envoy to UN in Geneva Ali Bahreini sees the US as ‘complicit in what Israel is doing’
  • Tehran would set a red line, and respond if the United States crosses it

GENEVA: Iran has conveyed to Washington that it will respond firmly to the United States if it becomes directly involved in Israel’s military campaign, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva said on Wednesday.

Ali Bahreini told reporters that he saw the US as “complicit in what Israel is doing.” Iran would set a red line, and respond if the United States crosses it, he said, without specifying what actions would provoke a response.

Israel launched an air war on Friday after saying it had concluded Iran was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons. US President Donald Trump called on Tuesday for Iran’s “unconditional surrender.”

Bahreini called Trump’s remarks “completely unwarranted and very hostile. We cannot ignore them. We are vigilant about what Trump is saying. We will put it in our calculations and assessments.”

The US has so far taken only indirect actions, including helping to shoot down missiles fired toward Israel. It is deploying more fighter aircraft to the Middle East and extending the deployment of other warplanes, three US officials said.

“I am confident that (Iran’s military) will react strongly, proportionally and appropriately. We are closely following the level of involvement in the US... We will react whenever it is needed,” he said.

Thousands of people were fleeing Tehran and other major cities on Wednesday, Iranian media reported, as Iran and Israel launched new missile strikes at each other.