Project Masam’s Managing Director Ousama Algosaibi has said that the problem of landmines in Yemen may be an old one as landmines that have been planted in Yemen during the six past wars were traditional landmines, but today Yemen is facing a new type of anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines.
During a phone interview with the TV Program Malaf al-Youm, presented by Amal al-Hennawi on Cairo-based Al–Qahera News channel, Algosaibi said “the Houthi militia has developed homemade landmines”, adding that 85 per cent of the landmines removed by Masam are homemade ones which have been developed in order to cause the greatest possible harm against the innocent civilians in Yemen.
“The types of landmines have changed and so did the technology used in their manufacture,” Algosaibi told al-Youm.
The Managing Director continued saying: “The mine clearance is not a traditional process in the traditional sense of the word recognised worldwide. Rather we consider it a war against the Houthi landmines planted in Yemen”.
Algosaibi added: “The Masam team is removing mines planted everywhere in Yemen and facing great challenges since the beginning of its mission in mid-2018. The team has succeeded in removing and detonating more than 377,000 anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines as well as explosive devices and unexploded ordnance from liberated areas in Yemen.”
Regarding the challenges Masam teams have been facing, the Managing Director said they were two-fold: they include the lack of maps that indicate the places where those mines are planted, and the spread of the landmines everywhere they worked including villages, agricultural lands, houses, mosques and grazing areas with the aim to terrorise civilians.
During the phone interview, Algosaibi affirmed that those mines have no military purpose and this is Yemen’s big dilemma.
Algosaibi added that the humanitarian landmine clearance project in Yemen is a one hundred per cent Saudi-funded under the umbrella of the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center.
The project is implemented and supervised by Saudi Arabia with no cooperation with any UN or international organisation working in the same field inside Yemen.
