Landmines destroy limbs and lives on Bangladesh-Myanmar border

In the dense elevation forests on Bangladesh’s borderline with war-torn Myanmar, villagers are losing limbs to landmines, casualties of a struggle not of their making.

Ali Hossain, 40, was collecting firewood successful aboriginal 2025 erstwhile a blast shattered his life.

“I went into the jungle with chap villagers. Suddenly, determination was an detonation and my limb was blown off,” helium said. “I screamed astatine the apical of my voice.”

Neighbours rushed to stem the blood.

“They picked maine up, gathered my severed limb and took maine to hospital.”

In Ashartoli, a tiny colony successful Bandarban district, the weapons of a overseas warfare person turned forests, farms and footpaths into sidesplitting grounds.

Bangladesh’s 271km (168-mile) eastbound borderline with Myanmar cuts done forests and rivers, overmuch of it unmarked.

It is crossed regular by villagers, arsenic their families person done for generations, to cod firewood oregon transportation retired small-time trading.

Myanmar is the world’s astir unsafe state for landmine casualties, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which has documented the “massive” and increasing usage of the weapons, banned by galore states.

The radical recorded much than 2,000 casualties successful Myanmar successful 2024, the latest afloat twelvemonth for which statistic are available, treble the full reported the twelvemonth before.

“The usage of mines appeared to importantly summation successful 2024-2025,” it said successful its Landmine Monitor report, highlighting “an summation successful the fig of excavation victims, peculiarly adjacent the border” with Bangladesh.

Bangladesh accuses Myanmar’s subject and its rival equipped groups of planting the mines.

Arakan Army fighters, 1 of the galore factions challenging the junta’s rule, power swaths of jungle crossed the border.

More than a cardinal Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar besides unrecorded successful Bangladesh’s borderline regions, caught betwixt the warring subject and separatist forces.

Bangladesh constabulary accidental astatine slightest 28 radical were injured by landmines successful 2025.

In November that year, a Bangladesh borderline defender was killed erstwhile a landmine tore disconnected some his legs.

Bangladesh’s borderline unit has enactment up informing signs and reddish flags, and carries retired regular mine-clearing operations.

But villagers accidental warnings connection small extortion erstwhile endurance depends connected entering forests seeded with explosives, leaving communities successful Bangladesh to wage the terms of war.