Clearing landmines in Syria; sending pickups to troops in Ukraine (29/3/2025)

8 months ago

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Transcript

00:00A

00:21shepherd trying to defuse a landmine with his bare hands. It happened in Syria. Since

00:27the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December, many Syrians have been returning to their homes

00:32in areas that were once minefields. According to the UK-based HALO Trust, more than 300

00:39Syrians have lost their lives in accidents involving landmines and unexploded shells

00:44and bombs. Samy Mohamed is head of demining for the Syrian Civil Defense Force, the White

00:50Helmets. Some ordinary Syrians take on the demining themselves. Take a look at this video.

01:19This man is disposing of some Russian-made cluster bombs. He drops them into a hole in

01:25the ground. The first one is okay. But on the fifth, the man is on the ground. But he

01:37gets up. The White Helmets do not have training to deal specifically with landmines, but they

02:00are used to defusing unexploded rockets and bombs and have six teams on the ground.

02:30The United Nations estimates that more than 1,400 unexploded devices have been neutralized

02:54in Syria since December. They say the worst affected provinces are Deir Ezzor, Aleppo,

02:59Idlib, Hama and Latakia, scenes of fighting between the Assad regime and the opposition

03:04during Syria's 14-year civil war. The HALO Trust has 40 demining experts operating in

03:12Syria and they run campaigns to educate civilians about the dangers. One of my colleagues, Sheba,

03:18who teaches children in schools what to look out for, said she went to a village and she

03:23found a group of boys playing football with a cluster bomb because it was a small round

03:28ball and they had no idea how dangerous it was. And actually, the spinning mechanism

03:33is what fuses a cluster. So the fact that they were playing with it was making it more

03:38dangerous and making it much more likely there was going to be a horrible accident. Demining

03:49activities in recent years have focused on Syria's northeast. Both the White Helmets

03:54and the HALO Trust told us they are planning to start operations in other parts of the

03:58country. A rocket launcher mounted on the back of a pickup truck by Ukrainian soldiers.

04:13There's nothing unusual in that except that the pickup was a gift, a donation from a fundraiser

04:18in Poland. His name is Mateusz Wodziński. He raises money in Poland to send pickups

04:24and SUVs to help Ukraine fight off its Russian invaders. Wodziński and his associates purchase

04:32second-hand vehicles and fix them up. Ukrainian soldiers use them for transport or equip them

04:38for combat. Wodziński says more than 18,000 people have contributed to his initiative,

04:43enabling him to send 313 vehicles to Ukraine. These cars are used on the front line for

04:51many different purposes, such as evacuating wounded soldiers from the front line, transporting

05:01ammunition to the front line. The soldiers themselves, to and from their positions, this

05:10one is going to be converted into a kind of homemade rocket artillery system. Others

05:19like this one, they have a machine gun mounted in the back and the whole thing is used to

05:26shoot down Russian drones. Wodziński makes his living as a translator, but he has dedicated

05:34the last year to working full-time on sending vehicles to Ukraine, taking them to the front

05:39himself. He believes it is his duty as a Pole. The interests of Poland and Ukraine are pretty

05:47much the same. We want Russia to be as weak as possible and we want to keep Russia as far

05:53away from us as possible. So the Ukrainians are doing just that. They are also helping us to keep

06:01Russia far away from our borders. Wodziński has been congratulated by Ukraine's foreign

06:07ministry. He says that whether or not a ceasefire is negotiated, the Ukrainian soldiers he meets

06:13have no faith in Russia, and he plans to keep sending them vehicles.

06:22That's it for this week. As always, you can find more reports from our observers on our website

06:25observers.franz24.com. I'll see you next time.

Clearing landmines in Syria; sending pickups to troops in Ukraine (29/3/2025)

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