TWO MEN KILLED BY LAND MINE IN NORTHERN BOSNIA YESTERDAY

SARAJEVO, Bosnia (June 30,2008) - Two Bosnians were killed in woods in northern Bosnia when they stepped on a land mine left over from the 1992-95 Serbian,Montenegrin and Croatian aggressions,Bosnian police said in a statement today.

Ismet Tagic, 48, and Nihad Dagic, 24, were chopping wood on Sunday evening when Tagic stepped on a land mine that killed them both. Two other men were slightly injured from the blast in Turije, some 120 kilometers north of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, police said.

A deadly legacy of the Serbian,Montenegrin and Croatian aggressions against Bosnia, hundreds of thousands of land mines remain hidden throughout the country, one of the most heavily mined in the world.

After the fighting, documentation was collected on the location of some 350,000 mines, but NATO experts say that represents only one-third of the total number laid during the war.

Clearing the mines will take decades and cost millions of Bosnian Marks.However,foreign donations are decreasing as donors turn toward new crises in other parts of the world.

According to the records of the International Committee of the Red Cross, land mines and other ordinance have injured over 1,500 people in Bosnia, more than 400 of them fatally, since the end of the 1992-95 Serbian,Montenegrin and Croatian aggressions against Bosnia. A fifth of the victims were under 18.
.