‘I thought I’d died.’ How land mines are continuing to claim lives in post-Assad Syria

IDLIB, Syria — Suleiman Khalil was harvesting olives in a Syrian orchard with two friends four months ago, unaware the soil beneath them still hid deadly remnants of war.

The trio suddenly noticed a mine lying on the ground. Panicked, Khalil and his friends tried to leave, but he stepped on a land mine and it exploded. His friends, terrified, ran to find an ambulance. Khalil thought they had abandoned him.

“I started crawling, then the second land mine exploded,” Khalil, 21, told the Associated Press. “At first, I thought I’d died. I didn’t think I would survive this.”

Khalil’s left leg was badly wounded in the first explosion, and the second blast blew off his right from above the knee. He used his shirt as a tourniquet on the stump and screamed for help until a soldier nearby heard him and rushed to his aid.

“There were days I didn’t want to live anymore,” Khalil said recently, sitting on a thin mattress, his amputated leg still wrapped in a white cloth. Khalil, who is from the village of Qaminas, in the southern part of Syria’s Idlib province, is engaged and dreams of a prosthetic limb so he can return to work and support his family again.

Though the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war came to an end with the fall of longtime President Bashar Assad on Dec. 8, war remnants continue to kill and maim. Land mines and explosive remnants have killed at least 249 people, including 60 children, and injured 379 since Dec. 8, according to INSO, an international organization that coordinates safety for aid workers.

Mines and explosive remnants — widely used since 2011 by Syrian government forces, its allies and armed opposition groups — have contaminated vast areas, many of which became accessible only after the Assad government’s collapse, leading to a surge in the number of land mine casualties, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report.

‘It will take ages to clear them all’

Long before Dec. 8, land mines and explosive remnants of war frequently injured or killed civilians returning home and accessing agricultural land.

“Without urgent, nationwide clearance efforts, more civilians returning home to reclaim critical rights, lives, livelihoods and land will be injured and killed,” said Richard Weir, a senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Experts estimate that tens of thousands of land mines remain buried across Syria, particularly in former front-line regions such as rural Idlib.

“We don’t even have an exact number,” said Ahmad Jomaa, a member of a demining unit under Syria’s Defense Ministry. “It will take ages to clear them all.”

Jomaa spoke while scanning farmland in a rural area east of Maarat al-Numan with a handheld detector, pointing at a visible antipersonnel mine nestled in dry soil.

“This one can take off a leg,” he said. “We have to detonate it manually.”

Psychological trauma and broader harm

Farming remains the main source of income for residents in rural Idlib, making the presence of mines a daily hazard. Days earlier a tractor exploded nearby, severely injuring several farmworkers, Jomaa said. “Most of the mines here are meant for individuals and light vehicles, like the ones used by farmers,” he said.

Jomaa’s demining team began dismantling the mines immediately after the fall of Assad. But its work comes at a steep cost.

“We’ve had 15 to 20 [deminers] lose limbs, and around a dozen of our brothers were killed doing this job,” he said. Advanced scanners, needed to detect buried explosives or roadside bombs, are in short supply, he said. Many land mines are visible to the naked eye, but others are more sophisticated and harder to detect.

Land mines not only kill and maim but also cause long-term psychological trauma and broader harm, such as displacement, loss of property and reduced access to essential services, Human Rights Watch says.

The rights group has urged the transitional government to establish a civilian-led mine action authority in coordination with the United Nations Mine Action Service, or UNMAS, to streamline and expand demining efforts.

Under Assad’s government, Syria’s military laid explosives years ago to deter opposition fighters. Even after the government seized nearby territories, it made little effort to clear the mines it left behind.

‘Every day someone is dying’

Standing before his brother Mohammad’s grave, Salah Sweid shows a photo on his phone of his sibling, smiling behind a pile of dismantled mines. “My mother, like any other mother would do, warned him against going,” he said. “But he told them, ‘If I don’t go and others don’t go, who will? Every day someone is dying.’”

Mohammad Sweid was 39 when he died Jan. 12 while demining in a village in Idlib. A former Syrian Republican Guard member trained in planting and dismantling mines, he later joined the opposition, scavenging weapon debris to make arms.

He worked with Turkish units in Azaz, a city in northwestern Syria, using advanced equipment, but on the day he died, he was on his own. As he defused one mine, another hidden beneath it detonated. Mines littered his village in rural Idlib after Assad’s ouster. Mohammad Sweid had begun volunteering to clear them — often without proper equipment — responding to residents’ pleas for help, even on holidays when his demining team was off duty, his brother said.

For every mine cleared by people such as Mohammad, many more remain.

In a nearby village, Jalal al-Maarouf, 22, was tending to his goats three days after the Assad government’s collapse when he stepped on a mine. Fellow shepherds rushed him to a hospital, where doctors amputated his left leg.

He has added his name to a waiting list for a prosthetic, “but there’s nothing so far,” he said from his home, gently running a hand over the smooth edge of his stump. “As you can see, I can’t walk.” The cost of a prosthetic limb is more than $3,000, far beyond his means.

Alsayed and Aljoud write for the Associated Press.