News – April 2024


  • Texas: Austin HSEM Launches Regional Bomb-Making Materials Awareness Program

    April 26, 2024

    Austin’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (HSEM) is launching a new program in the capital area. The Bomb-Making Materials Awareness Program (BMAP) is a federal bombing prevention program with over 300 participants trained across cities in Texas. Austin HSEM’s program is unique as it is the first local jurisdiction in the nation to use grant ...

  • Syria remains country hardest hit by landmines due to casualties, says UN official

    April 26, 2024

    Landmines, explosive remnants of war, and improvised explosive devices continue to cause death and injury, especially around armed conflicts, with one person on average killed every hour, with Syria hit hardest, a UN official said Friday. Christelle Loupforest, who heads the UN Mine Action Service in Geneva (UNMAS), said that communities are suffering tremendously from the ...

  • Balikatan 24: Explosive Ordnance Disposal Training

    April 26, 2024

    U.S. Marines with 3rd Explosive Ordnance Company, 9th Engineer Support Battalion, 3rd Marine Logistics Group; 1st EOD Company, 7th ESB, 1st MLG, and service members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines conduct a controlled demolition range during Exercise Balikatan 24 at Colonel Ernesto Rabina Air Base, Philippines, April 26, 2024. Balikatan 24 is an annual ...

  • Sudanese army says downed three drones targeting Merowe airport

    April 26, 2024

    The Sudanese army announced on Saturday that it had shot down three drones that attempted to target Merowe Airport in the northern state. This attack comes 48 hours after the army reported engaging reconnaissance drones in the Umm Bakul area near Meroe and thwarting their mission. Read more… Source: Sudan Tribune Sign up for our Newsletter Related:  

  • UN peacekeepers close base in preparation to leave DR Congo

    April 26, 2024

    The United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has helped in the fight against rebels for more than two decades, has closed one of its key bases as it prepares to leave the Central African nation this year at the request of the government. The mission, also known as MONUSCO, ...

  • Ukraine is riddled with land mines, drones and Ai can help

    April 25, 2024

    Early on a June morning in 2023, my colleagues and I drove down a bumpy dirt road north of Kyiv in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Armed Forces were conducting training exercises nearby, and mortar shells arced through the sky. We arrived at a vast field for a technology demonstration set up by the United Nations. Across the ...

  • Israel: Nearly intact Iranian missiles found in the Negev

    April 25, 2024

    The IDF made the decision to disclose this information since some missiles successfully struck the Nevatim base, and this was reported abroad. Despite not responding directly to reports of a transport plane being hit in the attack, the IDF did provide an explanation for the nearly intact missiles discovered in the Negev. The missile found this ...

  • Pakistan: Six Frontier Corps personnel injured in Khyber IED blast

    April 25, 2024

    Six Frontier Corps personnel were injured in an improvised explosive device attack on a military convoy in Upper Bara here on Wednesday. Security officials in the region said that suspected militants targeted an FC convoy in Enzara area of Upper Bara during general patrolling of the area by the security forces. Read more… Source: Dawn News Sign up for ...

  • UNMAS Iraq Programme Report 2023

    April 25, 2024

    Initially, UNMAS Iraq was supporting stabilization and the restoration of basic infrastructure to enable safe and dignified returns of IDPs to the areas liberated from ISIL. In doing this UNMAS Iraq surveyed 30,567,078 sqm and rendered safe more than 673,041 items of EO through nearly 2,000 stabilization tasks. Read more… Source: Reliefweb Sign up for our Newsletter Related:  

  • Thailand: Live grenade and bullets discovered in Pattaya neighbourhood

    April 25, 2024

    A fully functional hand grenade, type M26, was discovered in the neighbourhood of Wat Boon Sampan (Soi Khao Noi) in east Pattaya on April 22, sparking immediate action from police explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) personnel. A local security guard, Pratum Chomsuwat, 73, stumbled upon the grenade near a single-story cement house while cleaning the vicinity with ...

  • Pakistan: Repolling delayed in Balochistan’s Kohlu after landmine explosion injures two

    April 24, 2024

    Repolling in the Kohlu district of Balochistan for the PB-9 constituency could not take place on Wednesday after a landmine exploded and rockets were fired at a polling station, according to the deputy commissioner. The incident came just hours after one person was killed in a rocket attack at the election office of a PPP candidate ...

  • New evidence challenges the Pentagon’s account of 2021 Kabul airport suicide bombing

    April 24, 2024

    New video evidence uncovered by CNN significantly undermines two Pentagon investigations, the latest of which was released last week, into an ISIS-K suicide attack outside Kabul airport, during the American troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. The incident was a gruesome coda to America’s longest war, leaving dead 13 United States military service members and ...

  • Yemen: Blast in the Gulf of Aden may mark a new attack by Houthi rebels after a recent lull

    April 24, 2024

    A ship near the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait saw an explosion in the distance Wednesday, marking what may be a new attack by Yemen’s Houthi rebels through the crucial waterway for international trade. The explosion, reported by the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center, comes after a relative lull from the Houthis after they ...

  • Pentagon dedicates exhibit to Joint Explosive Ordnance Disposal

    April 24, 2024

    WASHINGTON — Part of a corridor in the Pentagon was dedicated to the joint explosive ordnance disposal mission April 23, 2024. “It’s truly an honor to officially open the Pentagon’s first and only explosive ordnance disposal exhibit,” said Melissa Dalton, deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. Over the course of 17 months, conceptual ideas became reality, items ...

  • U.S. announced a new $1 billion package of arms for Ukraine

    April 24, 2024

    The Pentagon on Wednesday announced a new $1 billion package of arms for Ukraine, which includes badly needed artillery rounds, munitions for U.S. donated M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS and air defense systems. At the same time, it is coming to light that the U.S. has already supplied additional ATACMS ballistic missiles to ...

  • India: IED explosion damages bridge on NH2 in Manipur

    April 24, 2024

    A bridge on the National Highway 2 in ethnic violence-hit Manipur’s Kangpokpi district was partially damaged in an IED explosion early on Wednesday, disrupting traffic movement in the area, police said. The blast occurred on the bridge between Sapermeina and Koubru Leikha areas around 12.45 am, an officer said. Read more… Source: Business Standard Sign up for our Newsletter Related:  

  • Dual-Mode Paveway IV Guided Bombs Headed To Ukraine

    April 24, 2024

    Ukraine will receive Paveway IV precision-guided bombs as part of the latest package of weapons being supplied by the United Kingdom to assist in the war with Russia. A U.K. Ministry of Defense official confirmed to TWZ that the Paveway IV “was included in the package of 1,600 munitions that was announced by the Prime Minister ...

  • New Zealand: Armed police in Christchurch find ‘item of concern’ while executing search warrant

    April 23, 2024

    Armed police and the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) bomb squad are inspecting an “item of concern” found at a Christchurch address tonight. It comes after police were conducting search warrants at two residential addresses on Grimseys Rd, Redwood, today in relation to ongoing investigations. A photographer at the scene said the Armed Offenders Squad (AOS) ...

  • Meaningful action to prevent the use of explosive weapons in populated areas could almost halve number of child casualties in conflicts

    April 22, 2024

    NEW YORK/OSLO, 22 April 2024 – Between 2018 and 2022, explosive weapons were responsible for nearly half – 49.8 per cent – of the more than 47,500 instances of children killed and maimed that were verified by the United Nations, in more than 24 conflict zones globally. The vast majority of these instances occurred in populated ...

  • Nigeria: Boko Haram bomb ‘experts’ surrendered in Borno

    April 22, 2024

    Two Boko Haram improvised explosive device ‘experts’, Abubakar Mohammed and Bana Modu, have surrendered to troops, says the Multinational Joint Task Force ( MNJTF) in Borno. Lt. Col. Abubakar Abdullahi, the military spokesman, said this in a statement in Maiduguri on Monday. He said the suspects, who were under the age of 30, surrendered during a ...

  • Cambodia: Five killed by unexploded ordnance over the weekend

    April 22, 2024

    Two separate explosions from ordnance left over from Cambodia’s decades of warfare killed five people and injured two others, the head of the country’s demining agency said Monday. Some 4 million to 6 million land mines and other unexploded munitions are estimated to have littered Cambodia’s countryside during almost three decades of war and disorder that ...

  • Nigeria army vows revenge after soldiers killed in ambush

    April 22, 2024

    The Nigerian army has vowed revenge for the killing of six soldiers who were ambushed while on a peace mission in the central state of Niger last week. The troops were on a “fighting patrol” in Karaga village in the Shiroro area last Friday when they were attacked by what the army called “terrorists”. The slain ...

  • Mali: ‘Jihadists’ kidnap over 110 civilians in Mopti province

    April 22, 2024

    Suspected jihadists in central Mali are holding more than 110 civilians they abducted six days ago, local sources told AFP on Monday. Three buses carrying the civilians were stopped on April 16 by “jihadists”, who forced the vehicles and the passengers to head towards a forest between Bandiagara and Bankass, a local group of associations and ...

  • Syria: Rocket attack from Iraq targets US base in al-Hasakah Governorate

    April 22, 2024

    The attack, launched from the town of Zummar late on Sunday, was the first since early February to target US troops, when Iranian-backed groups in Iraq brought to an end a campaign that had seen regular strikes against the US-led international coalition. A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the Reuters news agency ...