AFTER 13 YEARS AND LARGE FOREIGN AID , ONLY 58% DEMINING IN JAFFNA!!!

About 58 per cent of Jaffna demining finished – Maj. Gen. Samarasinghe

by Dasun Edirisinghe


De-mining teams tasked with making the Jaffna Peninsula encompassing 1,025 sq. km. mine free have completed 58 percent of their mission, Jaffna Security Forces Commander, Major General Mendaka Samarasinghe says.

De-miners of the security forces and two NGOs are engaged in mine clearing


in the Jaffna Peninsula, comprising 15 Divisional Secretariats and 435 GS divisions.

As hundreds of thousands of persons had left for Colombo and overseas for security and safety reasons, the Peninsula now had a population of around 546,656, he said.

The army had not yet recovered any LTTE maps of mine fields. "We don’t know whether they actually had any" he said adding that he believed the outfit may have planted mines haphazardly.

He said mine clearing was a high risk time consuming task which had to be carried out precisely as even if a few mines were to be left, civilians would perish.

"Sri Lanka Army Engineers, HALO Trust and Danish de- mining group (DDG) were engaged in de – mining operations. Of the entire operation, 90 percent comes under SLA engineers and six and four percent under HALO Trust and DDG respectively," Maj. Gen. Samarasinghe said.......................

www island.lk