ZAGREB, September 18, 2018 – Clearing 1.8 square kilometres of mines between Sisak and Petrinja of as many as 3,585 explosive devices left behind after the Homeland War is a great success for Croatia’s model of mine clearing and is globally recognised.
Croatia’s deminers managed to clear that area in record time, just 39 days, which is significantly sooner than planned. The head of the clearing operation Predrag Kusić told Hina that this was possible due to good organisation and dedication shown by deminers and good weather conditions.
The works were conducted by 25 subcontractors with 294 deminers. Despite such a large area and considering the quantity of explosive devices founds, the job was completed without any incidents.
The mine clearance operation in the Kotar-Stari Gaj forest was entirely financed with a grant from the Swiss Confederation as part of a Swiss-Croatian cooperation programme in the amount of almost 19 million kuna.
The Kotar forest, which is surrounded by a number of villages, is considered to be one of the most dangerously mined areas. There is not one area in Croatia where so many casualties occurred in such a small space.
Since 1991, there were 49 incidents involving mines there, with 19 people killed, 20 suffering serious and 10 suffering minor injuries. Since 1 July 1996, 27 casualties were reported, with 12 people killed, eight with grave injuries and seven with minor injuries. Twelve people were killed by mines in just one street on the outskirts of the forest.
Now that this area has been cleared, local residents feel safer and hope that there won’t be any more incidents of that nature.
