Sanaa, Yemen – It was August 2023, and Enaya Dastor was reading a school textbook while also keeping an eye on her goats as they grazed near her village, Jabal Habashy, in central Yemen’s Taiz governorate.Whenever the livestock moved away, the then-13-year-old would walk or run to bring them back to the pasture near her house.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listThat afternoon, she was following them as usual when an explosion rang out.A landmine had detonated beneath her.“People gathered around me after the blast, and I was taken to the hospital immediately. It was a horrible moment, ” Dastor told Al Jazeera. Surgeons were forced to amputate her left leg, leaving her with a lifelong disability.The incident took place more than a year after fighting between Yemen’s government and Houthi forces largely stopped, following a ceasefire in April 2022.But landmines left behind on former battlefields and front lines continue to kill and injure Yemenis.The hidden risks have turned fields, roads, and villages into areas of ongoing danger. Landmines and other explosives have killed at least 339 children and injured 843 since the 2022 truce, according to Save the Children. The organisation found that nearly half of child casualties related to the conflict were due to landmines and explosive remnants of war.‘Sleeping killers’The parties to Yemen’s conflict planted thousands of mines during the civil war, which began in 2014.Two months before Dastor’s incident, a boy in a nearby village had stepped on a landmine. One of the boy’s legs was amputated in the explosion, she told Al Ja …
