January 27, 2017
Algeria says it has completed the removal of border landmines, destroying nearly 9 million mines that date to the colonial era.
“The completion of the mine clearance operation crowns over 50 years of constant work on the ground, for the final eradication of mines in our country,” said General Boualem Madi, speaking on behalf of Algeria’s defense ministry at a press conference earlier this week in Algiers.
Madi said the cleared land amounts to more than 62,000 hectares, now returned to productive use and available for development. The decades of mine removal were completed in extremely difficult conditions, notably “weather conditions, remote and hard-to-reach regions, dense forests and disappeared marks of the mines,” he said, according to an English translation provided by Algeria News Service.