Team:Edinburgh/mapxmlkyrgyzstan



Kyrgyzstan <![CDATA[Kyrgyzstan is contaminated by landmines, mainly in the southern Batken province bordering Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as a result of mine use by Uzbekistan’s military between 1999 and 2000. It has been reported that rainfall and landslides caused some mines to shift.

Kyrgyzstan is also contaminated with explosive remnants of war (ERW), primarily unexploded ordnance (UXO), in the Ferghana Valley region where Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan meet. There is a danger of accidental explosions and tampering to salvage scrap metal. When Kyrgyzstan was part of the Soviet Union, Soviet forces used Kyrgyzstan as a weapons testing ground, raising the additional possibility of residual UXO contamination.

The extent of mine contamination is uncertain. In 2003, Kyrgyz authorities estimated that Uzbek forces had mined approximately 42km of the 1,300km border and around the Uzbek enclaves of Sokh and Shakhimardan located within Kyrgyzstan. The Shakhimardan enclave was said to have been demined in 2005.

The head of Kyrgyzstan’s Border Service was quoted in 2003 as acknowledging that Kyrgyzstan had also used landmines in mountain passes to stop cross-border movements by “bandits.” A Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative stated that Kyrgyzstan laid “a small amount of mines” on its “southern” border, apparently with Uzbekistan. In a statement to the Standing Committee meetings in May 2006, Kyrgyzstan claimed that all the mines it laid had been cleared, although no details were provided. According to Danish Demining Group in 2006, mines continue to pose a major risk to the civilian population and present an obstacle to agricultural development in the region.

In 2007, two men were injured trying to disassemble a landmine in Bishkek. These were the first mine casualties since 2003, when one person was killed. In 2006, one boy was killed by ERW.

Casualties continued to occur in 2008 with four casualties in an incident involving ERW found at a military training field in Osh in May (three killed and one injured). Two teenage boys and one woman were killed and a man was seriously injured.

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