Syrian landmine casualties set to spiral as school year ends

Source: HALO

Posted: 20 Jun 2025

20 June 2025: The HALO Trust warns that the end of the school year in the Middle East in late June will see a significant spike in fatalities and injuries as hundreds of thousands of families return home to areas that were recently frontline battlefields.

HALO, the world’s largest landmine clearance charity, says that there are around 160 landmine and unexploded ordnance casualties every month, with more than 1,000 civilians killed or injured by unexploded bombs and landmines since the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. One in three of those victims are children​.

Over the last six months, an estimated 1.3m refugees and internally displaced people have already made the journey home across Syria, according to UNHCR. Several hundred thousand are expected to return from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan now that schools have finished for the year. Syria’s cities, towns and villages are heavily contaminated with dangerous explosives, from cluster munitions, bombs and landmines to ballistic missiles and rockets.

“Syria is now the most dangerous country in the world for civilian accidents caused by explosives, so as primary and secondary schools across the region close their doors for the summer holidays, we are expecting a sharp uptick in explosives accidents as families return to land littered with landmines and remnants of war,” says Simon Jackson, HALO Syria Programme Manager.

“Calls to our emergency hotline in and around Idlib have increased tenfold since December and we are prepared for them to escalate over the coming months, particularly in urban areas where explosives lie concealed in the rubble of destroyed buildings. During the summer break, thousands more children will also be outside playing in the streets, boosting the risk of maiming or death as they pick up shiny objects or step on hidden munitions.”

To help mitigate the threat of unexploded ordnance to children and families, HALO carries out regular risk education classes in what were frontline communities in the northwest of the country, with plans to expand operations to the south and east, including Deir ez-Zor, the governorate with the highest number of explosives accidents to date.

According to Médecins Sans Frontières, between April and May this year 51 patients were admitted to the emergency room at Deir ez-Zor National Hospital, and half were children. In just five days between the end of May and the start of June, four children lost their lives in Al-Merei’iye, a heavily contaminated area near Deir ez-Zor, including two playing in the debris outside their homes.

HALO is safely destroying landmines and other munitions as fast as it can, but it currently only has a small team of 120 deminers working in the northwest of the country. The charity estimates that it will cost around $40m a year for a full-scale operation to clear Syria of explosives.

HALO has called for Syria to sign up for the Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty to help it access expertise, funding and resources to deal with the landmine threat and as a symbol of the country’s transformation.

Notes to Editors:

• *Demining and controlled explosions b-roll here and images here.
• The HALO Trust has been operational in Syria since 2016 in former opposition-controlled areas of the country.
• HALO operates in over 30 countries worldwide and has a staff of over 10,000 local people working to help their communities recover from conflict.