The Conflict in Syria: What’s happening?

After more than a decade of conflict in Syria, the country is facing a deadly new chapter: a humanitarian emergency caused by landmines and unexploded ordnance scattered across towns, fields, and roads. 

Following the collapse of the Assad regime, communities that are desperate to return home and resume their lives are now facing a new threat: the extensive presence of landmines and unexploded ordnance left behind from the conflict in Syria. 

Explosive threats, left behind after the frontlines of conflict in Syria shifted, include cluster munitions and air-dropped bombs, which are buried in the rubble and litter entire communities.  

One international security monitor has recorded some 900 victims, many of them children, since December. Casualties from only a five-month period in Syria represent a staggering 15% of the casualties reported globally across more than 50 countries in 2023, and almost 90% of those reported in the most impacted country that year, Myanmar.  

One medical facility in Idlib visited by a MAG team just weeks ago reported that they had treated 500 victims of mines and UXO in the same period.  

Over the years, the conflict in Syria has brought thousands of patients with war injuries to Hamed Osman, the Head of Nursing at Idlib Surgical Specialised Hospital. But now, although the war has shifted, there is a new threat. Landmines and explosives left over from the fighting. 

“Four people every day, on average, are being brought into just this one hospital because of landmine or explosive ordnance accidents. It is like a flood.  

We worry it will get worse as more people return and as more people try to reclaim their land, begin farming or try to rebuild their homes.”