In Iraq minefields, an old war leaves a menacing legacy
The Iraqis who pick over their country’s old battlefields for military scrap metal and wiring have few other ways to make a living, but the task comes with enormous risks. So numerous are the wounds inflicted by mines and ordnance in Jurf al-Milh that the southern Iraqi village is better known as al Bitran, which […]Mohammed Ati writes for Reuters:
The Iraqis who pick over their country’s old battlefields for military scrap metal and wiring have few other ways to make a living, but the task comes with enormous risks.
So numerous are the wounds inflicted by mines and ordnance in Jurf al-Milh that the southern Iraqi village is better known as al Bitran, which means “the amputees” in the local dialect.
Hundreds of villagers have lost limbs to mines and unexploded ordnance from the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-1988.
