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Yemen has a long history with landmines, and mainly during the war of “The front” in the eighties, the wars between the north and south between 1972 and 1971, and the war of the summer of 1994. And behind these conflicts lie a heavy legacy of landmines, and heavier toll of deaths.
But the landmines that the Houthi militias planted since 2015 in different parts of Yemen, and before that in Sa’ada since 2014, have become the most dangerous, due to their vast propagation, as no Yemeni province is spared of them.
During the last six years, only the Houthi militias were planting landmines in Yemen. And many reports indicate that there are more than 2 million landmines planted by the Houthis in more than 15 Yemeni provinces.
Due to this excess in planting the deadly traps, landmines have become the most distinguished and effective weapon in the hands of the rebels to target the innocents in the mountains, valleys, plains and residential areas.
The Houthi coup militias never withdraw from a region without afflicting it with hundreds of landmines, which led to the fall of victims, and will lead in the future to double their numbers as the militias plant them randomly and without maps that can help in detecting them to clear them.
And thus, Yemen was on top of the list of countries in relation to the number of landmines’ explosions in 2018, according to the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining. This is why counting the number of victims of the death buried underground is a very daunting task.
The real number exceeds what some organizations announced, as some human rights reports indicate that the number of the Houthi landmines’ victims is over 10 thousand, and mostly women and children.
The province of Taiz topped the list, then the province of Al Hudaydah, and in the third place Al Jawf province.
This calamity which was brought by the Houthi militias afflicted Yemenis and especially the children, as many of them were buried underground, while the others became handicapped because the landmines devoured their bodies and shattered their souls.
This criminal organization threw a state with its people into an inferno, without pity or mercy, just because it wants to impose its creed and secterian agenda which it believes that it gives it the right to rule and impose the agenda of the Iranian Mullas.
This destructive project was met with a project that aims to revive Yemen. A project that seeks light in the dark and defends the right of Yemenis to live in security. The project’s slogan is “Life without landmines”, because they are the main culprit in deteriorating the situation, terrorizing civilians, harming them and burning their lands with this venom.
This is why, project Masam’s teams were deployed in many Yemeni regions to shield Yemenis from more pains and sorrows.
In this context, team 13 Masam was able since it started its work until today to secure and clear 30 mined fields and regions, with a total size estimated at 700 thousand square meters from which 3 thousand landmines and explosive devices were cleared, in addition to shells and unexploded ordnance.
With a one team spirit, Masam’s teams continue their mission with perseverance and determination to lift this deadly burden from the Yemenis’ shoulders, and to clear this land of the deadly traps that are dispersed in all its corners, facing all the challenges and hurdles, and ignoring the death that lurks to target them.