Two Tajik teenagers were injured on May 9 after aт anti-personnel mine exploded at the Afghan border in the Shamsiddin Shohin (formerly Shouroobod) district.

The tragedy took place in the evening not far from the village of Sarichashma, where the 14-year-old Shukrullo Fakhriddin and the 13-year-old Shorukh Khairddin from the village of Kavok were pasturing cattle, Ms. Umeda Yusupova, a spokeswoman for the Committee on Emergency Situations and Civil Defense (CES), told Asia-Plus in an interview. 

According to her, the boys sustained multiple fragmentation wounds and were taken to the central district hospital in Vose.  

“Physicians assess their health conditions as stable,” Yusupova said.  

Residents of rural areas still remain at the mercy of wartime mines, which are a legacy of the republic's disastrous civil war in the Nineties.

Most land mines in Tajikistan were laid during the five-year civil war, which ended in 1997.  In many areas the mines still pose a deadly threat as well as a major impediment to effective land use.

Additional land mines were laid along the Tajik-Uzbek border by the Uzbek authorities in the late 1990s.  The action was reportedly taken to stave off incursions by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).

According to data from the Tajik Mine Action Centre (TMAC), 600 people became victims of land mine explosions during the period from 1992 to 2016; more than 300 of them killed, while the others sustained various wounds.  Almost all who have survived, have become disabled for life.

In 1999, Tajikistan joined the Ottawa Convention on the Prohibition of the Use of Anti-Personnel Mines and pledged to ban the planting and stockpiling of such explosive devices on its territory. 

During five years, According to TMAC, TMAC deminers reportedly cleared 500,000 square meters of land and more than 3,000 land mines and unexploded ordnance were deactivated.