National Mine Action Authority: 877 cases of deaths and injuries of civilians caused by mines recorded in de-occupied territories of Ukraine
This was announced during a briefing by Oleh Shuvarsky, Head of the Mine Action Department - Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of Mine Action, Civil Protection and Environmental Safety of the Ministry of Defence, Censor.NET reports citing Ukrinform.
"In the de-occupied territories alone, the secretariat of the National Mine Action Authority recorded 593 incidents in which 877 civilians were injured. Of these, 277 people were killed and 600 were injured. The most contaminated areas are in Mykolaiv, Kherson and Kharkiv regions, where more than 50% of all these incidents occurred," he said.
According to him, the process of releasing the territories of Ukraine from the ERW is very difficult, and all units involved in demining, both governmental and non-governmental, are using a wide range of modern equipment to improve the quality, efficiency and safety of deminers' work.
Shuvarsky said that these include modern mine detectors, ground penetrating radar, remote-controlled mechanised demining equipment and UAVs.
He noted that the area of the de-occupied territories where humanitarian demining can be carried out is currently 45,000 square kilometres.
"Non-technical surveys are currently being conducted in 115 territorial communities. According to its results, 1772 contaminated sites with a total area of 229 square kilometres have already been identified," he said.
Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale armed aggression, mine action operators have cleared 1452 hectares of territory.
"Of these, 24 plots with a total area of almost 126 hectares have been transferred to territorial communities. In addition, demining groups of authorised units of central executive authorities cleared 2610 square kilometres of territory from unexploded ordnance," Shuvarsky added.
