“They say this job is dangerous, and that’s true – it’s 1,000 percent dangerous,” explained Hoda Khaled, 33, from the city of Basra in southeastern Iraq.
Together with other 13 other women, Khaled is currently being trained to remove landmines and unexploded ordinance from the area. “We, the people of Iraq, have been through far more difficult circumstances,” Khaled said. “For years, we’ve been witnessing explosions right in front of our eyes, in the markets, in the streets. Our jobs are only as dangerous as our lives.”
According to the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), Iraq is one of the nations most contaminated by munitions. Decades of conflict in the country have left behind approximately 2.7 billion square metres of land contaminated by mines and other explosives, equivalent to an area about three-and-a-half times the size of New York City.
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Source: VICE