BANGKOK: Landmines and unexploded ordnance claimed more lives in Myanmar than any other country last year, a monitor said on Wednesday (Nov 20), warning that the real toll could be double or triple the estimated 1,000 people killed or injured.

Decades of sporadic conflict between the military and ethnic rebel groups has left the Southeast Asian country littered with mines and deadly munitions.

But the military’s ouster of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021 fueled conflict in the country and spawned dozens of newer “People’s Defense Forces” (PDF) that are now fighting to topple the military.

Anti-personnel mines and explosive remnants of war killed or injured 1,003 people in Myanmar in 2023, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) said on Wednesday.

There were 933 landmine casualties in Syria, 651 in Afghanistan and 580 in Ukraine, the ICBL said in its latest Landmine Monitor report.

As conflict and other restrictions in Myanmar make ground surveys impossible, the actual death toll was likely much higher than reported, said ICBL’s Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan.

“How much more? Double? Triple? Very possible… There is no medical surveillance system in the country that can provide official data in any way or form,” he told a news conference in Bangkok.

“None of Myanmar’s armed groups, neither the army, nor any of the ethnic armed groups, nor the PDFs have given us data on the number of casualties they have.”

“And we know from anecdotal evidence that it’s massive.”

Myanmar is not a signatory to the United Nations Convention prohibiting the use, stockpiling or development of anti-personnel mines.

The ICBL said there had been a “significant increase” in the military’s use of anti-personnel mines in recent years, including around infrastructure such as mobile phone towers and power lines.

Such infrastructure is often targeted by opponents of the military.