Colombia Land Mines Toll Tops World as FARC Sow Them in Retreat

[Zorro]

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From a helicopter over Colombia, Bajo Grande looks like a ghost town. It has roads, a soccer field, a school and 60 rusted-roof dwellings, but no people.

The reason: land mines. The jungle village shows that while the government is winning its war against leftist rebels, the booby traps they've left behind remain an indiscriminate scourge. They've rendered Bajo Grande and other former rebel territories across the country uninhabitable minefields and made Colombia the world's leader in victims of such devices.

Residents fled the town in 1999, ceding it to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, its Spanish initials. Before the FARC was ousted last year, it laced Bajo Grande with mines. The government is now in the painstaking process of disabling them. Soldiers like Eriberto Zapato, 30, do the work. Wearing 24 kilos (53 pounds) of armor and a plastic facemask, he probes the soil with his fingers near the town's derelict church, listening for his metal detector to beep.

``They maim and kill and prevent farmers working the land,'' says Major Diego Padilla, head of the Bajo Grande de- mining operation as he rallies his 41 troops to the task. ``You will make it safe for the villagers to return and get back to work.''

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More at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=aBOI5qzWeUaI

[slackmaster]

1. That's FARCed up

:nuke:

[jaksavage]

2. Support a worldwide ban on these weapons! nt