Islamic State landmine kills 3 children in Ramadi

Anbar (IraqiNews.com) Three children died late Sunday when a landmine planted by Islamic State militants in Ramadi, according to officials in Anbar.

The three kids, aged 9-13 years, were herding a cattle when one of them trod on the landmine at al-Baghdadi precinct, west of the city, the region’s mayor, Sharahbil al-Obeidi, was quoted as saying.

Al-Baghdadi was briefly under Islamic State control before it was recaptured by Iraqi security forces. Anbar’s western regions still host some Islamic State strongholds that sustain occasional bombardments by Iraqi and U.S.-led coalition fighter jets. There has not been an officially-declared military campaign to free those regions, but the province’s military command launched a brief assault early January that managed to recapture some western villages before stopping again. It is believed that the Iraqi government will not aim at western Anbar before its forces are done with retaking Mosul, Islamic State’s biggest bastion in Iraq where security forces have been battling the group since mid October.

Very recent airstrikes pounded the location of meetings believed to have been chaired by IS supreme commander, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whose survival remains a matter of question.

Iraq’s environment ministry said in 2014 it was setting a strategy to clear the country from landmines by 2018, and said then that southern Iraqi regions alone contained 25 million unexploded mines. But the United Nations, voicing last year its commitment to rid Iraq of dangerous mines, set the number of unexploded mines in the country at only 26.000.