Iraq's landmine legacy

By Richard Lister BBC correspondent in Basra

Hundreds of Iraqis are killed or injured each month by landmines

Any country suffers from the dangers posed by unexploded munitions after a war, but Iraq has been through three major conflicts in the last 30 years and UN officials say it is the most contaminated country they have ever worked in.

For evidence of that you don't need to travel far from Basra. A line of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines snakes across the desert from the roadside as you come into the city.

Then there's the abandoned military airfield where anti-aircraft guns are still loaded and ready to fire.

Down the road a railway siding is littered with an arsenal of unexploded ordinance; everything from rockets and tank shells to mortars and armour-piercing bullets.

Young victims

The trains were loaded with munitions when the war began and bombed by coalition forces. Some of the ordinance is burnt out, some live, some dangerously unstable.

There are children there too, cheerfully rummaging through the debris and occasionally taking something apart to get to valuable scrap metal inside.

About 25 people are killed or injured by abandoned munitions every month in Basra. In northern Iraq, the figure is about 190 casualties each month.

Teaching a group of Iraqi school boys on the dangers of land mines

At one of Basra's hospitals I found some of the victims.

Saddam Mahdi Khudiaer is 24 and had been trying to clear a playground when a shell blew off half his foot.

In another ward a 12-year-old girl, Thurraya, sits with a vacant stare and a heavily bandaged hand.

She had been herding sheep in the desert when she picked up something which exploded.

The UN has already catalogued a thousand sites in Basra that need to be cleared.

Major task

They range from a couple of boxes of ammunition in a schoolroom to whole warehouses stacked with munitions.

This is clearly the tip of the iceberg. Work to catalogue such sites across the country has barely begun.

The army says all of the warning signs and fences it has tried to erect to keep people away from such areas have been stolen by looters and they need far more resources to tackle the problem.

Some of those resources have now arrived, with a company called Mine Tech which specialises in clearing unexploded ordinance.

An 86 strong team flew into Basra along with ten specially trained mine-detection dogs. An American company with funding from the US State Department is expected here soon.

The UN says it will take several months just to clear Basra of unexploded ordinance and without more resources it will take years to clear Iraq. The longer it takes of course, the more people will be killed and injured.