A man from Waingmaw Township, Kachin State, lost his right leg after stepping on a landmine and later died from his injuries.
At around 11:00 am on August 3, 44-year-old U Lau Shin stepped on a landmine while foraging for bamboo shoots in the forests near Mading/Hkakun Village, Waingmaw Township. He lost his right leg below the knee and later died from his injuries, despite efforts by the local Mon Myat Saytanar rescue team to save him.
“By the time he was evacuated, his leg was already gone. He’d lost his right leg below the knee, a tragic but all-too-common injury among landmine victims,” said an official of the group.
The patient’s blood pressure dropped on the way to the hospital, prompting the rescue team to administer two bottles of blood, but his injuries were too severe to survive.
The area around Mading/Hkakun Village is known to be a landmine danger zone and has seen explosions in the past. Despite the risks, locals continue to forage for bamboo shoots and wild vegetables in the surrounding forests to sustain their livelihoods.
The Mon Myat Saytanar rescue team reported that there have been six landmine-related casualties in Waingmaw Township since 2025.
Since 2023, Waingmaw Township has been a hotspot of military tension between the junta and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).
Throughout Myanmar’s decades-long civil war, both ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and the military have used landmines and other anti-personnel explosives.
Landmines come in various shapes and types, including anti-personnel mines, anti-tank mines, and booby traps. They are often concealed to make them difficult to detect with the naked eye.
Moreover, landmines pose a risk to civilians of all ages, races, and genders, even though they are not involved in armed conflicts.
The junta’s coup in early 2021 sparked nationwide armed resistance, which has driven increased use of landmines and a surge in casualties caused by these explosives, a trend also acknowledged by resistance forces in Sagaing Region.
According to the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), during 2020, the last full year before the coup, there were 252 civilian casualties from landmines, whereas after the coup UNICEF recorded 1,052 civilian casualties from landmines and unexploded ordnance in 2023 and 1,082 in 2024.
