Aid work still hazardous in Angola

A truck carrying food aid in central Angola detonated an anti-tank mine this week, drawing new attention to the risks associated with humanitarian efforts in the country. The explosion took place on the road between Kuito, in the central province of Bié, and Ndele, 55 km to the south. One person was seriously injured in Tuesday's blast. The truck was carrying food intended for the families of UNITA soldiers who are awaiting demobilisation at a quartering area in Ndele. "We have closed the road and asked a demining company to look at it so we can use the road as quickly as possible again," UN Humanitarian Coordinator Erick de Mul told IRIN. The road to Ndele is one of many routes which became accessible to humanitarian vehicles following the 4 April ceasefire signed between the Angolan Armed Forces and the UNITA rebels. Since then, the cessation of hostilities has allowed the UN and its partner organisations to expand their operations into areas of Angola previously off limits. De Mul said, however, that an element of risk always remained. "The whole issue is that we have this tension between the need to go and knowing that there is still the possibility that we would have a nasty surprise. We are ... used to taking calculated risks and making that risk as small as possible," he said. The Ndele route has seen regular traffic by military and humanitarian vehicles in recent weeks. But De Mul ruled out the possibility that the mine had been laid recently. He said that the device had probably been buried deeper than normal, which was why previous traffic on the road had not detonated it. "Before it [detonates] the ground has to be compacted and the way it becomes compacted is by trucks or cars going over it. I think this is a typical example of what happened there," De Mul said. Apart from the risk of landmines, De Mul said that broken bridges and roads in a bad state of repair made the humanitarian operation in the country "a logistical nightmare". "At the moment too little is being done on the maintenance and repair of roads and bridges," he said, emphasising that this task was the responsibility of the government. De Mul said: "It is a huge task. The only thing we hope is that this will be taken seriously and that it will be done as quickly as possible - but again you are probably looking at a considerable period of time before the whole thing is brought back into a state where you can say, 'we can now move around more or less comfortably and at a reasonable speed'."