The devastating Oct. 8 earthquake may have shifted thousands of landmines planted by Indian and Pakistani troops along their disputed Kashmir border, a group warned yesterday.
"We are very much concerned," said Shafat Hussain of Global Green Peace, a non-government organization that has worked since 1998 to persuade India and Pakistan to demine the region.
"There are thousands of mines out there threatening to take human lives," he said.
Hussain added that areas along the de facto border, the Line of Control (LoC), are "heavily mined" on both sides.
"As the earthquake triggered massive landslides along the Line of Control, it must have surely relocated these mines," Hussain said.
"We are told that respective armies do keep a proper map of the planted mines, but those maps will not help, given the devastation," he said.
Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Vijay Batra played down the risk.
"Landmines were planted along the LoC and army posts some 58 years ago. No civilian area is involved," he said.
"Wherever a little bit of damage has taken place to the minefields due to the landslides, it is not affecting the civilians as no mines have drifted or shifted towards the civilian areas," he said.
The Red Cross says that in the heat of war, mines are often not mapped or monitored and can shift depending on the weather and soil type, sometimes travelling several kilometers if washed out by heavy rain.
Hussain said if mines have been displaced they will put the lives of quake-hit villagers living along the LoC at risk.
Scores of people have died in landmine explosions over the years in Uri district, one of the regions in Indian Kashmir worst hit by the quake.
It took the Indian army weeks to demine a 3km stretch of road in Uri that is part of a overland route opened in April for a bus service between the Indian and Pakistani Kashmir capitals of Srinagar and Muzaffarabad.
The quake killed 1,300 in Indian Kashmir and tens of thousands on the Pakistan side.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of