Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Eritrea: Mines and UXOs Still a Problem

Kesete Ghebrezghi, 40, is an angry man. Living in a dry, stony village just eight kilometres from the border with Ethiopia, he told IRIN that life in his Eritrean village had not been the same since the border war of 1998-2000.

He said he felt particularly angry about the destruction caused by the war, but he believed that it was the the mines, more than anything else, that had continued to complicate the situation.

"[The war] has really affected our life, because we lost our property, and our farmland near the border has been mined," Kesete said.

Ethiopia and Eritrea fought for two years over a border dispute that killed some 70,000 people from both sides, and left a nasty legacy of mines and unexploded ordnance (UXO).

www.alertnet.org

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