1.5 mln Afghans live with serious disabilities, many victims of conflict: UN

An estimated 1.5 million people in Afghanistan are living with significant disabilities, the majority caused by decades of conflicts, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said on Wednesday.

In a statement posted on its official X account, the UNAMA highlighted that children bear a disproportionately heavy burden of these disabilities. Afghanistan remains one of the world’s most mine-contaminated countries, with unexploded ordnance and landmines from more than four decades of conflict continuing to claim lives and cause severe injuries daily.

In the past two weeks alone, separate explosions involving explosive remnants of war killed seven people, including children, and injured nine others in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Uruzgan, as well as in northern Balkh province.

A recent report by Afghanistan’s National Disaster Management Authority showed that around 1,150 square km of the country’s territory remains contaminated with landmines and other explosive remnants of war.