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Death, fear and pain are omnipresent in the Yemeni provinces. Death spreads its wings on hundreds if not thousands of Yemenis due to the landmines that are scattered everywhere and which killed hundreds of them so far.
The details of the tragedy caused by the Houthis’ coup seem painted on the body of the young man Mansour Ahmad. A Houthi treacherous landmine forced him to a wheelchair, and brought agony and misery upon him.
The story of this young man who answered the call of duty to protect his country combines the tragedies of many of his compatriots who either lost their lives, or lost their limbs and became handicapped and unable to work.
At the time when Yemen was hoping to heal from this cursed epidemic – that have lingered for the duration of the last half of the 20th century, and which have grown since with every new war – the Houthi coup came. This coup was the most dangerous chapter in the history of Yemen, as the Houthi militias planted thousands of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines in different proportions everywhere in Yemen. The Houthis, and since their invasion of the capital Sana’a until now, planted deliberately, extensively and randomly thousands of landmines wherever they lost lands, to kill as many civilians as possible, to satisfy their wicked psyche.
The landmines that they planted in agricultural lands, villages, water wells, roads and even schools and bridges injured thousands of civilians and killed at least 140 of them, including 19 children, only in Al Hudaydah and Taiz provinces, according to the website of the “Civilian Impact Monitoring Project”.
The Yemeni Human Rights Ministry documented since September 2014 until September 2018 the killing of 1593 civilians, including women and children by the Houthis’ landmines.
The ordeal of the landmines that were planted by the Houthis didn’t just kill and maim, it went farther to double the punishment inflicted upon civilians by depriving them from their sources of living, after they were forced to abandon their agricultural fields which were reeking of death.
The Houthis – according to the experts in dismantling landmines without maps – planted over a million landmines and projectiles.
And due to the absence of maps that can show where these devils planted the landmines, Masam’s teams rely mostly on predicting landmine fields whenever an explosion happens, or based on guidance from civilians, in addition to the information provided from official governmental institutions.
Masam’s staff never stopped fulfilling their humanitarian duty, their eagerness and will have become stronger to abort the Houthis attempts to destroy Yemen and kill its people. Masam has saved so far 178541 civilians. This is the number of landmines, unexploded ordnance and IEDs which were cleared since the launch of the project until the 7th of August. Masam was able also to clear 12.694.128 square meters of Yemeni lands during the same period.
Despite the dire situation in Yemen, project Masam keeps working hard and in perseverance to save the lives of Yemenis. In spite of the obstacles that the project faces on a daily basis, such as the nature of lands, the geographic distance and the security situation in general, Masam’s teams never gave up their belief of the rights of every human being to live in security.