On 31 August, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team from Mount Pleasant Complex (MPC) in the Falkland Islands were tasked to Cape Pembroke, North of Stanley Airport, for a possible landmine found by two serving soldiers from MPC.
A hero rat who was commended for his outstanding service detecting landmines has died. Magawa, a giant African pouched rat trained to find unexploded ordnance, was retired last year.
Six people were killed in Senegal by an old landmine in the Casamance region, the local mayor said Saturday. President Macky Sall offered his condolences to the families of the victims in a statement posted on Twitter. A spokesperson for the education minister, also said two of the victims had been primary school age.
The Falkland Islands government has confirmed that overnight on Monday 16 August, the Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team from the Joint Operations Command Centre at Mount Pleasant Complex was contacted by the Royal Falkland Islands Police (RFIP) regarding possible unexploded ordnance at Yorke Bay.
By John Fowler (*) – The selective amnesia of successive Argentine governments never ceases to amaze. Last week, during universal rejoicing in the Falklands that the eleven year-long demining campaign had finally come to a successful conclusion, the Argentine Government was complaining about it in Geneva.
As anticipated, the Argentine government objected to the mines' clearance effort announced by the United Kingdom in Geneva for having been addressed “unilaterally in Argentine territory illegitimately occupied” and in violation of UN Resolution 3149 which calls on both sides to abstain from any unilateral action in the disputed territories.
The United Kingdom made the official presentation in Geneva before the 18th meeting of the States parties Antipersonnel mine ban Convention of the successful Falkland Islands Demining, an eleven-year program which culminated in the clearance of 122 minefields, and was celebrated by the Islands' community last Saturday 14 November.
The Falkland Islands have been cleared of deadly landmines laid during the 1982 conflict and will be celebrating the occasion with two major events on Saturday, November 14. The legacy of the war with the occupying Argentine forces had meant that large areas of the Islands, for 38 years, were previously off-limits.
United States president Donald Trump’s decision to relax restrictions on the U.S. military’s use of anti-personnel land mines was “completely unacceptable”, the European Union said on Tuesday in a rare formal criticism of Washington.
President Donald Trump on Friday lifted US restrictions on the deployment of landmines, saying a new generation of high-tech explosives would improve security for US forces. In the latest reversal of a policy of his predecessor Barack Obama, Trump gave the green light to so-called non-persistent landmines that can be switched off remotely rather than staying in the ground forever.