Five students were injured by a landmine explosion on their way home from school in Mehran, a border city in Ilam province, on Monday March 2, 2015.
According to ISNA, the school principal reported that the incident occurred at 5 PM. The mine is one of the remnants of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, and this area was reportedly cleared of mines.
The school reports that the five students have mostly sustained burn injuries and are being treated at Ilam’s Imam Khomeini hospital.
Ilam province has a 430-kilometre border with Iraq and was directly involved in the Iran-Iraq War throughout the entire eight years. It has 1.7 million hectares of land polluted by mines and explosives, and many of those areas have still not been cleared. Consequently, there are a number of deaths and injuries each year due to mine explosions in this province.
Iran is the second-most mine-polluted country in the world, and although nearly 30 years have passed since the end of the Iran-Iraq War, 4.2 million hectares of land stretching across five of Iran’s border provinces directly involved in the Iran-Iraq War are still polluted to land mines.
