Clearing Landmines In Sirte Libya

Following the fall of Gaddafi in 2011, an absence of a strong central government has resulted in ongoing conflicts between rival armed groups and militias. Fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and reduced towns and cities to rubble, littered with dangerous debris鈥攆rom unexploded mortars to cluster bombs.

Despite previous efforts by several humanitarian mine action organisations to remove these lethal remnants of war, there has not been the technical knowledge needed to make Libya鈥檚 decimated cities safe. As a result, families desperate to rebuild their lives have been unable to return to their homes.

Our Work

Since establishing a presence in Libya in 2018, we have been able to draw on our 30 years of experience in mechanical clearance to make Libya鈥檚 urban centres safe. Unprecedented levels of destruction, including in residential areas with multi-story buildings, piles of rubble and collapsed buildings, demand innovative solutions, including adapting and armouring machines more commonly seen on civil engineering sites.

HALO has worked across the main cities of Tripoli, Misrata, Sirte and Benghazi, and currently has operations in Misrata and Sirte.

In June 2020, HALO鈥檚 survey teams began urgent work in the southern parts of Tripoli to assess the scale of explosives contamination in preparation of future clearance operations. A year of fighting in the city had left over 200,000 people displaced.

An armoured excavator clears rubble of explosives before the cleared rubble is transported to a designated dump spot. HALO Libya has a partnership with the UN Environment Programme to crush and recycle cleared rubble, so that it can be reused in local reconstruction initiatives.

Mechanical clearance is currently focused on the coastal city of Sirte. The last bastion of Daesh in North Africa until their defeat in 2016, Sirte experienced some of the worst fighting of Libya鈥檚 civil war. In collaboration with the Libyan Mine Action Centre (LibMAC) and local authorities, we have recruited and trained the first two mechanical clearance teams in Sirte. One pile of rubble at a time, they are now clearing their own city of explosive debris鈥攎aking it safe for people to return home and rebuild their lives.

OUR IMPACT

"It is my duty to clean up the explosives debris in Sirte. It is my city and I am never going to leave. I want my children and grandchildren to grow up here. I want them to have a better life here in Libya."

Hussain, Operations Manager, Libya

Hussain stayed in Sirte throughout the fighting, witnessing the pain and devastation as entire neighbourhoods were reduced to rubble. He became one of HALO鈥檚 first employees in the city and today guides our mechanical clearance teams as they sift through collapsed buildings to remove the bombs and explosives left behind. Once the neighbourhoods are declared safe, families will be able to return home and begin to rebuild their lives.