What are landmines?
There are anti-personnel and anti-vehicle landmines. Generally they are explosive devices with an outer structure made of either plastic, wood, metal, Bakelite, rubber and even glass and inside there will be a fuse, a detonator and explosives. Some contain thousands of pieces of shrapnel, designed to fire out to great distances, others contain no metal at all and are difficult to detect. Landmines are often round and range from the diameter of a small paperweight to a large tin of sweets or, in the case of anti-vehicle landmines, as large as dinner plates. Anti-personnel landmines can also be square or shaped like a butterfly, others are cylindrical with spikes that stick out of the ground. Homemade copies are called improvised explosive devices (IEDs). There are different injuries sustained by landmines due to the varying types: • Blast landmines are pressure-activated and generally produce injuries from the explosive going off; • Fragmentation landmines (various types) contain shrapn
