PHNOM PENH: Japan will work with Cambodia to remove land mines from Ukraine and other war-torn countries, Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa said during a visit to Phnom Penh on Saturday.
Millions of land mines were laid in Cambodia during the nearly three decades of conflict that ended in 1998, with tens of thousands of people killed or maimed over the years.
The Southeast Asian country is widely regarded as a world leader in land mine countermeasures and has been working with Japan to clear the weapons since 1998.
“Cambodia is an essential partner in Japan’s global land mine removal efforts,” Kamikawa said at a press conference.
“I am confident Cambodia will contribute greatly to raising awareness of the inhumanity of anti-personnel land mines as a country that suffered from them.”
The minister said Japan would provide Ukraine with a large demining machine next week, and in August would train Ukrainian agencies in Cambodia on how to use the equipment.
Heng Ratana, director general of the Cambodian Mine Action Center (CMAC), told reporters his organization and local deminers were “proud of this important initiative and strongly support the new strategy of the cooperation.”
“We are glad to take part in sharing experiences with countries that have problems with land mines and remnants of war in accordance with the policy of the (Cambodian) government,” he added.
Deaths caused by land mines occur frequently among civilians and soldiers in Ukraine, which has been littered with mines and explosive remnants since it was invaded by Russia in 2022.
According to Human Rights Watch, land mines have been documented in 11 of Ukraine’s 27 regions.
Russian forces are known to have used at least 13 types of anti-personnel mines since February 2022, the organization said.
Cambodia, meanwhile, is still littered with discarded ammunition and arms from decades of war starting in the 1960s.
Deaths from mines and unexploded ordnance are common, with around 20,000 fatalities since 1979, and twice that number injured.
In August last year, thousands of pieces of unexploded ordnance left over from the war were unearthed inside a school in the country’s northeast.
In 2018, an Australian and a Cambodian were killed when war-era ordnance exploded during a demining training exercise in southern Cambodia.
The government has vowed to clear all mines and unexploded ordnance by 2025.
Japan, Cambodia to help remove land mines from Ukraine
https://arab.news/5m55m
Japan, Cambodia to help remove land mines from Ukraine
- The minister said Japan would provide Ukraine with a large demining machine next week
- Deaths caused by land mines occur frequently among civilians and soldiers in Ukraine
Kyiv mayor calls for temporary evacuation over heating outages
- “Moscow is trying to use cold weather as a tool of terror,” Zelensky said
- He said 20 residential buildings in Kyiv had been damaged, including the Qatari embassy
KYIV: Mass heating outages caused by Russian strikes on Kyiv are set to last into the weekend, as the capital’s mayor called on residents to temporarily leave the city with sub-zero temperatures expected to fall even lower.
A massive missile and drone attack on Kyiv killed four and ripped open apartment blocks. Moscow also fired its feared Oreshnik ballistic missile at western Ukraine, drawing condemnation from Europe.
The barrage came hours after Moscow rejected a plan by Kyiv and its Western allies to deploy peacekeeping forces to Ukraine should a ceasefire be reached.
AFP journalists in Kyiv saw residents running for shelter late Thursday night as the air raid siren echoed, and heard Russian drones exploding into residential buildings and missiles whistling over the capital.
“Moscow is trying to use cold weather as a tool of terror,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said at a meeting in Kyiv with British Defense Secretary John Healy.
He said 20 residential buildings in Kyiv had been damaged, including the Qatari embassy, in one of the largest attacks on the capital for months.
Qatar expressed “deep regret” over the embassy hit and said that none of its staff there had been harmed.
- ‘Very difficult’ situation -
The Russian barrage left around half of all apartment blocks in the capital, some 6,000 buildings, without heating, Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said.
Temperatures are set to fall to -15C on Saturday.
Officials said they were hopeful some heating could be restored on Friday night.
“In some areas where the damage is more complex, additional time is needed,” Ukraine’s Restoration Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Klitschko said the situation was “very difficult” and called on “residents of the capital who have the opportunity to temporarily leave the city for places with alternative sources of power and heat to do so.”
City authorities said they had set up 1,200 warming centers.
- Russia fires rarely-used missile -
A medic who died at a building that was struck in a repeat attack was among the four killed, officials said. Another 26 were wounded.
Nina, 70, who lives in one of the buildings hit, told AFP she was angry that the world was talking about a possible deal to end the conflict at a time when Russia was launching such deadly barrages.
“Where is Europe, where is America? It doesn’t hurt them the same way,” she said.
Her neighbor, 58-year-old Kostiantyn Kondratchenko fought the second-floor blaze from a drone hit with a hose used to water flowers, he told AFP.
The barrage is just the latest to batter Ukraine as diplomats wrangle for a breakthrough in what has been Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
Russia has shown no sign of slowing down its ground offensive or aerial bombardments.
Moscow’s defense ministry said it had fired the Oreshnik ballistic missile on “strategic targets” — only the second time the new weapon, which the Kremlin says is impossible to stop, is known to have been used.
- ‘Escalatory and unacceptable’ -
Ukrainian authorities said a ballistic missile traveling “at about 13,000 kilometers (8,000 miles) per hour” had struck an “infrastructure facility” near the western city of Lviv.
It said Russia had attacked “civilian infrastructure,” without specifying the target or extent of any damage.
The Oreshnik is an intermediate-range ballistic missile that can be equipped with both nuclear and conventional warheads.
Lviv region officials said that radiation levels were within normal range after the attack.
France, Germany and Britain condemned Moscow’s “escalatory and unacceptable” use of Oreshnik, a UK government spokeswoman said after a call between leaders of the three countries.
Across the border in Russia’s Belgorod, the governor said more than half a million people were without power or heating after a Ukrainian attack targeted the region’s utilities.
Despite intense diplomatic efforts led by US President Donald Trump, a deal to end the fighting remains elusive.
Moscow baulked this week after European leaders and US envoys announced post-war guarantees for Ukraine would include a US-led monitoring mechanism and a multinational force.
Russia called the plan “dangerous” and “destructive.”
Key territorial issues are also unresolved as Russia insists on getting full control of Ukraine’s Donbas region, part of which is still controlled by Kyiv.
Russia occupies around 20 percent of Ukraine.
Tens of thousands have been killed since it invaded in February 2022, millions forced to flee their homes and much of eastern and southern Ukraine decimated.
