I consider them just as evil as the scumbags we're fighting. Keep up the extermination Russia!
Posted on 09/10/2003 6:52:27 AM PDT by RussianConservative
Land mines and bombs killed more people in Chechnya last year than in Afghanistan or any other place in the world, according to a grim report released by an international watchdog Tuesday.
A total of 5,695 people died in land mine and bomb blasts in Chechnya in 2002, compared to 1,286 in Afghanistan, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines said.
The report blamed both federal soldiers and Chechen rebels for the high casualty rate.
"Fighting, replete with massive violations of human rights and laws of war, including widespread use of mines by both sides, continues," said the report, titled "Landmine Monitor Report 2003."
The ICBL estimates that 2,140 people were killed by land mines and unexploded ordnance in Chechnya in 2001. That suggests the number of casualties more than doubled last year.
The report notes, however, that Chechnya jumped past Afghanistan to the top of the list after the Chechen Health Ministry for the first time released casualty statistics. Previously, the ICBL had been unable to obtain such information from Chechen authorities and had to analyze media reports and open sources to come up with estimates, according to Mary Wareham of Human Rights Watch, the global coordinator for the land mine report.
In a telephone interview from Washington, Wareham reiterated Tuesday the ICBL's position that both federal forces and Chechen rebels bore responsibility for the casualties, but she refused to offer any estimate of the losses suffered by each side.
She said the ICBL's reports cover both industrially produced land mines and unexploded ordnance, including bombs made of artillery ammunition wired to a remote control.
Thousands -- if not tens of thousands -- of mines have been laid along the security perimeters of Russian military and police units and dropped from military helicopters along suspected Chechen rebel routes since the Kremlin sent troops to the republic in 1999.
The troops, however, have significantly cut their use of land mines as major fighting has subsided, but rebels are now resorting more often to mines in their guerrilla war, said Alexander Pikayev, a security expert with the Carnegie Moscow Center. That said, federal troops have probably suffered more land mine casualties than rebels in recent months, Pikayev said.
Military vehicles are destroyed by bombs regularly. On Tuesday, a military truck was blown up by a land mine on the outskirts of Grozny, killing three soldiers and wounding six others, The Associated Press reported.
Chechen rebels typically conceal explosives along roads and detonate them with a remote control or timer when Russian convoys pass by.
Russian sappers clear mines along Chechen roads daily, but there are humanitarian mine clearance operations under way elsewhere in the republic, according to the ICBL report. Sappers cleared about 317,900 land mines and unexploded artillery ordnance in Chechnya in 2000 and 2001, the ICBL report said.
An official in Chechnya's Moscow-backed government disputed the casualty figures.
"I think that the organization's data are extremely exaggerated," Chechen Deputy Interior Minister Akhmed Dakayev was quoted by Interfax as saying. "We do not have any separate statistics related to land mine victims, but official data indicate that far fewer people were killed or injured [by land mines] in 2002 as compared with the figure provided in the report."
While reporting grim statistics for Chechnya, the ICBL commended Russia for observing a self-imposed moratorium on the export of land mines since 1994 and destroying excessive stockpiles. Russia destroyed 16.8 million mines from 1996 to 2002, but still possesses some 50 million, Human Rights Watch said.
The Russian defense industry was producing at least 10 types of antipersonnel mines in the early 1990s, and Russia's arsenal of land mines is second only to China's, according to ICBL estimates.
Russia, China and United States are among the countries that have refused to sign the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. Of the countries that have not signed, six continued to use antipersonnel mines in 2002, including Russia, India, Iraq, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan.
A total of 136 countries, including Belarus, have ratified or acceded to the Mine Ban Treaty, which prohibits the use, production, trade and stockpiling of antipersonnel mines. The treaty requires the destruction of buried mines within 10 years, according to the ICBL.
Second, to hell getting rid of land mine, they great force modifier for defender....when Chinamen come across, first thing they meet should be a kilometer of mine field, observed by Russian artillery and sniper.
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