Wash Post: Rising numbers of children dying from US explosives littering Afghanistan.

[woo me with science]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/a-rising-number-of-children-are-dying-from-us-explosives-littering-afghan-land/2014/04/09/dea709ae-b900-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html

By Kevin Sieff, E-mail the writer

Kabul — As the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan, it is leaving behind a deadly legacy: about 800 square miles of land littered with undetonated grenades, rockets and mortar shells.

The military has vacated scores of firing ranges pocked with the explosives. Dozens of children have been killed or wounded as they have stumbled upon the ordnance at the sites, which are often poorly marked. Casualties are likely to increase sharply; the U.S. military has removed the munitions from only 3 percent of the territory covered by its sprawling ranges, officials said.

Clearing the rest of the contaminated land — which in total is twice as big as New York City — could take two to five years. U.S. military officials say they intend to clean up the ranges. But because of a lack of planning, officials say, funding has not yet been approved for the monumental effort, which is expected to cost $250 million.

“Unfortunately, the thinking was: ‘We’re at war and we don’t have time for this,’ ” said Maj. Michael Fuller, the head of the U.S. Army’s Mine Action Center at Bagram Airfield, referring to the planning.
....
Since 2012, the United Nations’ Mine Action Coordination Center of Afghanistan has recorded 70 casualties in and around U.S. or NATO firing ranges or bases, and the pace of the incidents has been quickening. But the statistics do not paint a complete picture; The Washington Post found 14 casualties not included in the U.N. data, Yusef (age 13) and Jawad (14) among them.
....
Senior U.S. military officials have said little publicly about the problem...Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said in a news conference last month that “taking care of all the unexploded ordnance” would consume about three months. But U.S. officials said later that Dunford was referring to the time it takes to remove ordnance from American bases — not from the high-explosives ranges where civilians are being wounded or killed.

[Wilms]

1. ^cry^

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[Mnemosyne]

3. k&r nt