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UMCOR aids demining team in Libya

 
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5:00 P.M. EST June 14, 2011 | MISRATA, Libya (UMNS)


Fred Pavey, team leader of an ACT Alliance demining group, examines unexploded ordnance and other remnants of fighting in Misrata, Libya. Web-only photos © Paul Jeffrey, ACT Alliance.
Fred Pavey, team leader of an ACT Alliance demining group, examines unexploded ordnance and other remnants of fighting in Misrata, Libya. Web-only photos © Paul Jeffrey, ACT Alliance.

Navigating through a picket of NATO warships posted off the Libyan coast, an ACT Alliance demining team sailed into the besieged city of Misrata June 13 to try to assist residents as they recover from months of war.

The United Methodist Committee on Relief, which is a member of the ACT Alliance, has contributed $50,000 to the demining effort.

The Rev. Cynthia Fierro Harvey, UMCOR’s top executive, said the grant was made “in solidarity with our partners to respond to the needs of the people” of Libya.

Aboard a Turkish ferry chartered by the International Organization for Migration, a two-person team from the DanChurchAid mine action program arrived to begin operations. The boat sailed the day before from Benghazi, a city in eastern Libya that is the de facto capital of rebels fighting to overthrow Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. The boat returned to Benghazi within hours, filled with wounded and hundreds of African migrants fleeing Misrata.

Forces loyal to Gadhafi have surrounded Misrata on three sides, and the only access to the city is from the sea. Most outsiders are staying away from the city because of the fierce fighting. The thunder of artillery and bombing repeatedly echoed in the distance during the team’s first day.

The landscape is littered with the still dangerous debris of war, some lying around, some embedded in the walls of family homes. Much of the city center was abandoned during the heaviest fighting, and displaced families are living with others around the edges of the city, afraid to come back to homes that may be unsafe.


Children play on a tank captured by rebel forces in Misrata.
Children play on a tank captured by rebel forces in Misrata.

The ACT Alliance team will begin within days to train teams of local residents to search for and identify unexploded ordnance left over from the fighting. The deminers will then remove and safely detonate the explosives.

‘An immediate impact’

“There is an immediate impact to our work here. When we can clear a house, the family can move back in and quickly get on with its life, the children can play safely and neighbors resume caring for each other,” said Fred Pavey, the team leader.

The team will devote time to clearing several key facilities, identified in partnership with the Libyan Red Crescent and the local government council.

Pavey had been waiting for weeks in Benghazi for permission to begin work there, and said leaders in Misrata, where the fighting had been fiercest, were eager to get started in recovering areas for safe civilian work.

“There is dangerous stuff on the ground all over the place here, and our work will make an immediate difference,” he said. “One woman told me, ‘We just want our kids to get back in school.’ People here want to get back to normal, even though the rebels are fighting just 20 kilometers away.”

The United Nations has yet to establish activities here, and, Pavey said, the ACT Alliance team’s presence should encourage other groups to go to Misrata.

“What we do enables the U.N. and other NGOs to come in and do what they can do. When we clear roads, for example, then the World Food Program can safely send trucks along those roads,” he said.

A team from the U.K.-based Mines Advisory Group also arrived in Misrata on the same ship, and both groups will coordinate their training.

Crowded together

According to Paul Boncz, an operations and quality assessment officer for the United Nations' Joint Mine Action Coordination Team (JMACT), the families displaced by fighting in Misrata are now living in houses crowded with six or more families.


A wounded rebel soldier is loaded aboard a ship in Misrata. The ship will carry him and other wounded, along with hundreds of fleeing African migrants, to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.
A wounded rebel soldier is loaded aboard a ship in Misrata. The ship will carry him and other wounded, along with hundreds of fleeing African migrants, to the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi.

The removal of mines and unexploded ordnance will make possible not just the return home of those families whose homes weren’t destroyed, but will also include strategic areas like schools, water supplies and religious buildings. “These are all important parts of everyday life, and the local economy will also start to pick up as people come home and open their small shops,” Boncz said.

Boncz, who made a six-hour visit to the city June 13, said he hoped the U.N. soon would decide it is safe enough to begin operations here. Meanwhile, he said, the ACT Alliance team had its work cut out for it.

“There are artillery shells, rockets, mortars, tank rounds, cluster munitions, all sorts of ammunition for heavy machine guns, all of it laying around all over the place,” Boncz said.

“There are also buildings that have been booby-trapped and need to be cleared. It doesn’t matter who’s responsible for putting it there. The fact is that it’s the civilian population that suffers when it returns home.”

*The Rev. Paul Jeffrey, a photojournalist and missionary with the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, was deployed to Misrata, Libya, as a member of the ACT Alliance Rapid Support Team.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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