Residents in capital learn bomb disposal

After months of cleaning up missiles and bombs, agencies like Norwegian People’s Aid are now training Iraqis in the capital, Baghdad how to conduct bomb disposal themselves. Missiles on launchers lined many of the roads taken by US-led troops as they invaded the country in March leaving the city littered with unexploded ordnance and creating a danger zone for hundreds of thousands of innocent local people. "Ammunition dumps were found in schools and unfinished houses - many of which have been cleared now," Tony Fish, project manager for the emergency mine action programme at Norwegian People’s Aid, told IRIN in Baghdad. “Today, we did three missiles at the university and some small stuff - fuses and pieces of bombs,” he said. “There’s so much here, we try to go as fast as we can.” With them are teams of civil defence workers - Iraqis who act mainly as a fire brigade and a bomb disposal unit. Teams were trained in 1991 to clear unexploded ordnance (UXO) left over from the Iran-Iraq war. "Those people are smart and good at their jobs, but need more training to make sure they don’t accidentally blow themselves up," one civil defence worker, who did not want to be named said. "Two recent accidents with explosives involved people who did not know how to defuse the devices properly," he added. “Because of the sensitivity of the work, dealing with explosives, they’re still not allowed to go out on their own,” the deminer said. “But when we’re gone and Iraq is free, they need to know how to take over the job.” Bombs put together with leftover ordnance from around the country have been used in the almost daily attacks on US-led coalition forces in recent weeks. Norwegian People’s Aid workers estimate they’ll be teaching Iraqi residents how to do the bomb disposal job for at least the next two years. According to UXO clearance teams and Coalition forces had removed probably 30 percent of the bombs and missiles left behind by the Iraqi army over the past four months. Civil defense teams are also learning how to build a database and use mapping equipment, with help from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and other groups, said Lt. Commander Kadhim Basheer Salih, a spokesman for the force. They’ll be talking to residents in and around Baghdad for the next few weeks to find out if any bombs are left by coalition forces, or by the Iraqi Army. “We did a workshop for 10 days to learn this job,” Salih explained. “We’ll ask people from the hospitals, from the mosque, or community leaders to tell us what they see in their neighbourhoods.” The hot summer sun is one of the main problems with leaving the missiles out in the open for the last couple of months, according to Fish. Several got so hot as they sat out in temperatures reaching 50 degrees, that they started leaking fuel, he said. When the weapons cooled slightly, leaked fuel and other propellants crystalised, making the weapon more likely to blow up unexpectedly. After almost four months in the country, the aid group has cleared more than 62,000 pieces of unexploded ordnance in and around Baghdad, everything from missile warheads to mortars. Although tehre are no statistics on how much land in Iraq is covered by ordnance, experts from the United Nations have also cleared huge amounts, as have US-led coalition troops. The UK based Mine Advisory Group (MAG) cleared some 800,000 pieces of ordnance in northern Iraq over the past five months alone. While Norwegian People’s Aid workers say they’re always cautious, they also feel the population greets them with open arms because of the work they do clearing bombs that kill and maim residents. “They say hello to us and bring us tea,” the civil defence worker said. “But we need to make sure we’re known just to the population, to the police and the army - not the terrorists.” Humanitarian groups are keeping a low profile following two recent suicide bomb attacks at the United Nations that have killed 25 people, including the UN's Special Envoy to Iraq. Most of the groups are still working in the country, although they are not driving marked vehicles or putting up signs, according to the NGO Coordination Centre of Iraq, or NCCI. A worker at NCCI on Monday declined to say how many expatriate staff are working in humanitarian organisations in the country, how many of the groups are still working, or where any of them are located.