Land mines destroyed

Zimbabwe at the weekend destroyed 4,000 land mines PANA reported. The mines were destroyed to comply with the Ottawa Convention which bans the use of the lethal weapons which maim and kill long after a conflict. The country’s parliament recently passed a law banning Zimbabwe from using land mines in war, paving the way for the army to destroy its stocks of the weapons.

Defence Minister Moven Mahachi said the stocks that were destroyed were inherited from colonial Rhodesian forces, but did not say whether the country had eliminated all the land mines it had. He denied reports that Zimbabwean soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they are supporting government forces against a rebel insurgency, were using land mines. Vast areas of Zimbabwe are littered with land mines dating back to the seven-year guerrilla war in the 1970s which led to independence in 1980.