Land mines, ‘masked’ explosives take lives in Donbas
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service (SES) has removed more than 33,000 explosive devices in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions since July 2014, and experts and volunteers are urging citizens to be on the lookout for mines planted by separatists in parks, buildings, along roadsides and other public places.
“It is getting to be a real problem,” Yaroslav Galas, head of the mass communications department of the Kyiv-controlled Luhansk State Administration, told SETimes. “The front line changes sometimes very spontaneously. In a hurry it was difficult to monitor all sectors where mines were left. For now sappers [military engineers] are inspecting the front line and villages close to the front.”
According to the Luhansk State Administration, land mines killed two civilians and seriously injured three more in the last three weeks.
“A 23-year-old male died near the town of Novotoshkivske last month. He was walking on the roadside and a fougasse [improvised mortar] detonated. Another case was when a mine tore away a girl’s legs and she died in the hospital,” Galas said.
A Grad rocket is lodged in the wall of a building in Debaltseve on February 28th. [AFP]
According to Anti-Terrorist Operation Centre (ATO) spokesman Andriy Lusenko, about 250 hectares in the Donetsk region are full of mines, grenades and other munitions.
Another problem is bombs launched by separatists that landed in peaceful territories but didn’t detonate. According to specialists, these bombs can be found anywhere and are extremely dangerous because it is impossible to predict when they might explode.
“A 13-year-old boy found a bomb near the Siverskiy Donets River,” Galas said. “He took it and brought it home where the bomb detonated. He is heavily injured. In fact, the river is a demarcation line. There have been many attempts to overcome it by militants.”
Experts said terrorists also have masked explosives in toys, books and bottles. More than 600 masked explosives have been detected by SES specialists in the last eight months.
“Such kinds of explosives have been used previously in the wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya,” Serhiy Moroz, a soldier of the Ukrainian Aidar battalion, told SETimes. “It is a method of the Russian secret service. It is a tragedy when a soldier dies, but when a child dies it is more than a tragedy. Especially for civilians here in Luhansk region, when such an explosion happens they blame everybody, including Ukrainian soldiers.”
Moroz said terrorists don’t have enough resources to produce the wide variety and large numbers of munitions that are being seen in the occupied territories.
“There is no doubt terrorists get it [ammunition] from Russia. They don’t have capacities in Luhansk to produce dozens, thousands of pieces of ammunition. They bring it from Russia. Therefore Russian mines kill Donbas civilians,” Moroz said.
Ongoing shelling has impacted residential buildings, experts said. When people find undetonated bombs, they call sappers, but when the bombs are stuck in concrete, whole residential areas are sometimes evacuated for weeks while the weapons are extracted.
According to Galas, the Luhansk State Administration experienced this problem in the town of Krymske, where a bomb got stuck in an apartment building. Sappers found it difficult to safely remove it.
Rodіon Hryhoryan, a member of the organisation Narodnyi Tyl (People’s Home Front), who voluntarily delivers necessary supplies to the front line, said there are many undetonated bombs in the middle of Donbas roads, stuck in the asphalt.
“Sometimes it is very difficult to protect yourself because one can drive the main road and find a mine stuck in the asphalt. It remains there undetonated. You get very lucky if you notice it and manage to pass that area of the road safely,” Hryhoryan told SETimes.
Volunteers who help Ukrainian soldiers in the ATO area exchange information about dangerous sectors. Local populations constantly receive information about mines and bombs through civic-military co-operation and state institutions.
Hryhoryan said it is important for people to remember that danger can be found anywhere.
“Therefore we drive carefully and understand that there are a lot of land mines and fougasses,” he said. “So we try not to stop on the roadside and not to go to the undiscovered areas. We understand some places may be mined, especially territories that were occupied for a long time by terrorists.”
Experts and analysts said mines left by militias in the Ukrainian territories will long terrorise civilians in the future.
“Areas now occupied by terrorists have been converted to minefields,” Hryhoryan said. “They don’t care about the maps of minefields and there certainly will be bad consequences in the future.”
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