Project Masam deminers have warned of the rise of a little-known threat amid Yemen’s continuing war: landmine migration during rainy season.
A migrating landmine is a mine moved by nature from the original position it was laid in to another, without any human intervention – by water mostly, and by wind and sand.
For centuries, the rainy season has been awaited and welcomed by Yemen’s farmers, fields, and animals, with the rainfalls celebrated as the season of fertility, cultivation and crop preparation but now torrents sweep away everything in their paths – including landmines and other remnants of war.
Because landmines can be transported by a flooded river anywhere from several meters to dozens of kilometres, the clearance area can easily enlarge exponentially if landmines are washed down from existing and confirmed mined sites.
Despite Masam’s warnings widely disseminated all over Yemen before the beginning of the last rainy season, two young men, Ahmed Ali Al-Awadi, 14, and Laith Nasser Al-Awadi, 18, yesterday sustained injuries, as a result of the explosion of an improvised explosive device swept away by the floods to the Wadi Bayhan area.
During this rainy season, Masam warned civilians – especially in several Yemeni areas, including Bayhan Shabwah, Harib, Marib, and Numan in Al-Bayda – of the danger of landmines and remnants of war that the floods may have washed away from contaminated areas to populated and agricultural areas in these districts.
The weather in Yemen varies on geography. Yemen’s western highlands have two distinct rainy seasons – the saif which runs between April and May and the kharif which brings torrential rains and flooding from June to September.
