A check warned that the actual number of deaths or injuries may be double or triple the 1, 000 that the official figure for Myanmar as a whole next year.
The Southeast Asian nation is rife with fatal landmines and weapons after years of occasional fight between the martial and ethnic rebel groups.
But the military’s ouster of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021 has turbocharged conflict in the country and birthed dozens of newer” People’s Defence Forces” ( PDFs ) now battling to topple the military.
Anti-personnel mines and explosive remnants of war killed or wounded 1, 003 people in Myanmar in 2023, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines ( ICBL ) said on Wednesday.
There were 933 spot deaths in Syria, 651 in Afghanistan and 580 in Ukraine, the ICBL said in its latest Spot Check report.
The actual fatality rate was likely much higher than the reported figure, according to Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan of the ICBL, because of the conflict and other restrictions in Myanmar, which made ground surveys difficult.
” How many more? Double? Quad? Very probably… He stated at a press conference in Bangkok that there is no land with a program that can provide official information in any way or form.
” No armed group in Myanmar, not the defense, not any of the ethnic armed groups, not the PDFs have provided us with any data on the number of deaths they have”.
” And we know from anecdotal evidence that it’s massive”.
Myanmar does not participate in the UN convention that forbids the creation, storage, or use of anti-personnel mine.
According to the ICBL, there has been a” significant increase” in the military’s use of anti-personnel mining recently, including in areas involving infrastructure like power pipes and mobile phone towers.
These types of equipment are frequently targeted by military-related opponents.