After more than a decade of war, Syria is now facing a deadly new chapter: a humanitarian emergency caused by landmines and unexploded ordnance scattered across towns, fields, and roads.
Throughout this week, we are sharing stories from the ground – from medics to farmers to families. This series follows the unfolding reality of post-war Syria, where recovery is being stalled by hidden explosives.
A HUMANITARIAN emergency is unfolding in Syria because of the scale of landmine and explosive ordnance contamination after 14 years of conflict.
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.
These explosive threats, including cluster munitions and air dropped bombs, are buried in the rubble and litter the roads and fields.
The movement of people, both those internally displaced and refugees from neighbouring countries, has seen a dramatic increase in reported landmine and UXO casualties.
One international security monitor has recorded some 900 victims, many of them children, since December.
These 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.
Whilst shocking, there are likely to be countless more accidents occurring. 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.
Building on its extensive experience in other emergency contexts, first hand evidence from recent assessments and the high number of recorded accidents, MAG considers the situation in Syria to represent the greatest humanitarian impact of landmines and unexploded ordnance anywhere in the world.
This requires an urgent response and MAG is taking steps, including signing a Memorandum of Understanding with The White Helmets civil defence authority, to scale-up its operations to deliver urgently required risk education and survey and clearance work, and exploring further partnership opportunities.
MAG anticipates that it will require an increase in funding from current levels of about $6 million a year to about $25 million in order to provide an appropriate response across the whole of Syria.
The ebb and flow of the conflict that tore the country apart has seen hundreds of thousands of casualties over a decade and a half.
A wide range of conventional and improvised explosive devices, including landmines, were used across Syria during the war, all of them with the potential to fail and lie where they fell, dormant but deadly.
Cluster munitions were extensively used in Hama, Homs, Aleppo and in the Damascus suburbs. Air-dropped bombs were deployed in Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor and Aleppo, often leading to massive UXO contamination.
Conventional anti-personnel (AP) and anti-tank (AT) mines were extensively laid around military positions, fluctuating frontlines and along strategic road networks. There is also evidence of the use of improvised explosive devices which were deployed by ISIS in Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa, often in abandoned homes, vehicles, and infrastructure.
Few parts of the country are untouched. In Aleppo, there is extensive urban destruction and the presence of UXO from battles that took place between 2013 and 2016.
In Hama, there is heavy contamination due to prolonged conflict, cluster strikes and multiple belts of landmines, while the three-year siege of Homs, from 2011 to 2014, resulted in large-scale UXO and cluster munition remnants.
In the devastated Damascus suburbs of Harasta, Irbin and Jouba, meanwhile, where whole neighbourhoods were reduced to rubble and where former residents are attempting to return to any homes that remain habitable, there are almost certainly lethal levels of contamination.
MAG has been working in Syria since 2016 and is the largest and most experienced mine action actor in the country with more than 220 staff, and teams deployed across Al-Hasakah, Raqqa and Deir-Ez-Zor in the northeast of the country.
Images: MAG/Emily Garthwaite
A SENIOR medic at trauma centre in northern Syria has described the number of casualties from landmine and explosive ordnance accidents in the country as a ‘humanitarian emergency’.
Hamed Osman, the Head of Nursing at Idlib Surgical Specialised Hospital, said the influx of patients who had suffered serious and sometimes fatal injuries was like a flood.
Mr Osman said: “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.”
Speaking during a visit to the centre by MAG teams at the end of April, Mr Osman added: “Since December we have treated almost 500 landmine accident patients. About 60 patients died and many have lost limbs. Very sadly, 68 of those patients were children and five of those children have died.
“We used to deal with war injuries. We thought it was over but now we have another war to deal with.”
Mr Osman says urgent work is needed to make people aware of the risks and dangers because people feel like they have no choice but to return to their land and to farm to earn money.
He adds: “People are desperate to reclaim their homes which are surrounded by rubble and unexploded ordnance, so risk education is crucial. Every day, lives are being lost because we are not taking enough action and people are not being made aware of the danger.”
Images: MAG/Emily Garthwaite
Landmine contamination in Syria is hampering efforts at conflict recovery and attempts by people to return to homes and resume their livelihoods, as well as costing lives and limbs.
Farm worker Muhanna was ploughing a wheat field when his tractor detonated a landmine.
One of his three co-workers died two days later from head wounds caused by fragmentation from the landmine. Muhanna is not sure whether he is lucky or unlucky – he survived but received devastating injuries.
Speaking from his hospital bed in Idlib, northern Syria, he said: “We were about to rest for lunch and someone said we will do two more lines.
“I was third in the row and I drove over a landmine. When it exploded I didn’t realise what it was or that I’d been injured. Then I realised I was badly hurt.
“My friend in front of me was also terribly injured; he had shrapnel in his head. He died two days later.”
Muhanna, 28, says they knew landmines were a risk but they thought they would be safe because they assumed their land was not contaminated. His leg bones were crushed and he has had to undergo a bone graft from his hip to try to save the left leg. He also has multiple injuries to his hands.
“We have no choice because we have to cultivate land to survive. We have to work and we have to grow food.
“I have a friend was also hurt recently by a cluster bomb – he was collecting scrap metal from the rubble to recycle and sell. This is a big issue here as we try to rebuild our towns and villages.”
Many of the accidents are taking place in remote areas, where people are farming. The cost of the operations and caring for patients is also a huge burden.
Mr Osman said: “We need risk education now and we need teams to begin to mark the dangerous land and to begin clearing the priority areas near people’s homes so they can safely return and so people can access their farmland.”
Images: MAG/Emily Garthwaite
The family of Amina, 23, have been unable to use their land since she stepped on a landmine and lost her leg.
Before being displaced by the war, the family olive grove’s 70 trees would produce 40 or more 18-litre tanks of high-grade olive oil, pressed in nearby Hama and then sold locally and to wholesalers.
Today the family must scratch a living by labouring for other farmers because they have been unable to enter the grove since Amina, 23, stepped on the landmine. Her leg was amputated.
Her father, Salah, said: “We were squeezed north by the fighting back in 2019 but last year we risked returning because we were desperate for money and we knew there was a harvest waiting for us.
“We were only days into the harvest when Amina stepped on an anti-personnel mine. I was with her so was able to carry her to safety.” The accident happened about four metres from the safety of the road but Salah says he only just avoided stepping on another mine as he rescued his daughter.
“Now our olives just rot on the ground,” says Salah. “Our trees are wasted. We have farmed here for 200 years but now we can do nothing. How can we have a living without our land?”
Amina says: “I remember each and every detail because I was conscious all the way through and aware of everything until I went into the surgery room.
“I knew that I had lost a foot and then they amputated just below my knee. Of course, we know now the land is contaminated. Seven people in my family rely on that land but it is useless. We pray we can one day harvest again.”
Images: MAG/Emily Garthwaite
