Explosive ordnance continues to claim lives across Syria, with more than 500 people killed or reported injured since December, according to the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS).

The long Syrian civil conflict which drew in multiple foreign forces in over a dozen years of fighting, has left a “devastating legacy of landmines and unexploded ordnance throughout the country”, affecting most of populated Syria, particularly in the northwest.

Speaking from Damascus to UN News’s Khaled Mohamed, the Chief of the Mine Action Programme in Syria, Joseph McCartan, highlighted UNMAS’s efforts to address the contamination and deadly impact of unexploded ordnance in the country.