BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Twenty-five percent of the world's unexploded land mines are buried in Iraq, making it one of the most contaminated countries, the environment ministry said Tuesday.
More than 20 million mines are scattered in the war-plagued nation, Deputy Environment Minister Kamal Hussein Latif said.
"That has become a heavy legacy on the country that hobbles its economy and health,'' Latif said in Baghdad.
Many of the land mines date to 1960s, when Iraq launched military operations to quell the Kurdish rebellion in the north. But they also are a legacy of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, when Saddam Hussein's regime planted them in the desert near the border, along with the first Gulf War in 1991 and the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.
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