landmines

I caught up with Stuart Hughes' blog, he is the BBC producer who lost a foot in northern Iraq, he has now had his cast removed and is recovering in the UK. His blog is good funny reading, but also sad and shocking. The number of mines in the world is really quite frightening, 110 million in the ground and the same number stockpiled, it costs at least 100 times the amount to remove the mine as it does to deploy it. Then you have otherwise intelligent people working on self protecting mine fields, like they don't cause enough damage already. Dozens of people, many children will die or be injured from the mines already in Iraq, they kill more children as they are smaller.
The Mines Advisory Group are actively clearing mines in northern Iraq, they hope to raise enough money to clear the rest of Iraq and other places.