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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan | |
| Jordan clears 83,000 mines on Syria border | |
| 2010-12-28 | |
| AMMAN - Jordan has destroyed 83,000 out of 136,000 landmines it laid along the border with Syria in the 1970s, an official said on Monday. “The kingdom removed 83,000 landmines on the Jordanian-Syrian border under a project that started in 2008,” said Mohammed Breikat, head of the National Committee for Demining and Rehabilitation. “The project, conducted by the Norwegian People’s Aid under the supervision of the NCDR, aims at clearing 10 kilometres (3.8 square miles) of land or 93 minefields,” he was quoted as saying by the state-run Petra news agency. “The land can be used for agriculture and investment.” Breikat said more than 200 people were working on the project, as he announced Japan had donated his organisation 357,000 dollars to clear the anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. Jordan began clearing minefields as early as 1993, one year before it signed a peace treaty with Israel. The desert kingdom then had more than 300,000 landmines strewn across its territory, most of them in the Jordan Valley next to Israel, and also near its eastern border with Iraq and northern border with Syria. Most of the mines were laid during successive Israeli-Arab conflicts.
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #2 There was a big armored fight in 1970, CyberSarge. It was an after-affect of the great Palestinian uprising of that year, the so-called "Black September". The Syrians sent an armored division over the border during the chaos, kicked the local Royalist ground forces around, then got plastered by Jordanian air support & tucked tail for home. This was a big part of why Jordan was *not* a combatant in the Yom Kippur War three years later. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2010-12-28 12:45 |
| #1 Steve how interesting that they deployed mines on the Syrian border. I don't remember a skirmish between them but I do remember the King beating down the Paleos that tried to overthrow him. Perhaps they King knew of Syrian support. |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2010-12-28 11:18 |