The morning sun had just begun to warm the streets of Saraqeb when the women of the Faratouni family heard the blast. Survivors of more than a decade of war, they were braced for the worst. They ran toward the construction site where the men and boys had been working, now covered in a cloud of smoke and dust.
“We didn’t think they would survive,” remembers Fatima Faratouni, now gently guiding her sons Mohammed and Ahmed to a sitting area lined with floor cushions and carpets.
Ahmed, 8, has tiny metallic specks embedded in his face, echoing the embroidery on his gray jalabiyah robes. His eyes remain shut as he recalls the moment an explosive – possibly a land mine or an old, unexploded ordnance – tore through the ground as he and Mohammed scooped up mud. He shares fragmented memories of that day along with dreams of riding a bicycle and a distaste for school. Mohammed, 10, also injured and blinded in the explosion, listens in silence.
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With Syria’s civil war over, people are returning home. But rebuilding is a potentially lethal task, as streets and farmland are seeded with unexploded land mines – with children and civilians in harm’s way.
“I had hoped my boys would grow up and get an education,” says Ms. Faratouni, shifting Ahmed on her lap to try to ease the pain in his injured legs. But now her family is focused on finding a path to healing – though they don’t want her husband to go back to construction work due to the danger of another tragic turn. “God wrote this for us.”
Across war-shattered Syria, tens of thousands of displaced families are slowly returning to their hometowns, eager to rebuild their lives. But for many, that hope is cut short by a deadly legacy: unexploded ordnance and land mines lurking beneath degraded agricultural fields and the rubble of destroyed homes.
More than 1,000 people, including children, have been killed or injured by land mines and remnants of war since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad in December. The country lacks health facilities fit to deal with emergency situations or provide long-term, specialized care to survivors.
“Across Syria, we have an unexploded ordnance crisis,” says Dr. Radwan al-Ashrafani, head of the emergency department at Idlib University Hospital, which opened in 2020. “Most injuries we see here are to the limbs or face. … A tiny piece of shrapnel can blind you. The victims are often families – children, farmers – just returning to their homes and fields.”
“Our hands are tied”
The country’s decimated health infrastructure means that even when expertise exists, essential equipment does not, Dr. al-Ashrafani explains. Doctors often recommend survivors receive multiple surgeries and prolonged rehabilitation. The Faratouni household is struggling to care for the two boys and their uncle who was badly maimed that day.
Surviving adults and children across the country struggle to recover behind closed doors at home or, in graver cases, hospitals. Specialized hospitals are urgently needed, according to Dr. al-Ashrafani. But he puts even greater emphasis on the need for prevention. “This threat is new to people,” he says. “We must raise awareness so that people avoid unverified areas.”
Demining activity is limited. Both local and international humanitarian groups are overwhelmed by the scale of contamination. Three members of the White Helmets, a Syrian volunteer search-and-rescue group, lost their lives in May while checking a suspicious object in northeastern Idlib.
Syria is severely under-resourced when it comes to demining. The British-based HALO Trust charity, which operates in Saraqeb and boasts members trained to remove anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, is trying to scale up fast. The organization has just six armored front-end loaders and a single excavator in Syria – now at work clearing a heavily contaminated agricultural area with a history of shifting front lines. “We feel guilty we can’t do more, but our hands are tied,” says HALO’s Zakaria el-Othman.
Rudimentary, color-coded blocks mark the boundary between safe and dangerous ground. Traffic – a trickle of motorbikes and vehicles piled high with the belongings of homeward-bound families – is shut down to conduct controlled explosions. “The problem is monumental” laments Mr. Othman. “This is just one of many sites. There are so many affected regions. Every day we get calls from people begging us to clear their land.”
Mr. Othman dreams of acquiring high-capacity demining vehicles capable of clearing 200,000 square meters (49 acres) a day, which are available to Ukraine, but not yet to Syria. Despite international sanctions relief, the prospects of Syria getting such specialized equipment at the necessary scale appears slim amid global funding cuts for humanitarian work.
“It is better to work with what we have than not do anything,” says deminer Hiba al-Hassan, one of the rare women on the team, who wears a black niqab and expertly handles wires.
Will Edmond, country director of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), notes that mine action continues to be the most underfunded sector in Syria’s humanitarian response, with only 12% of the required 2024 humanitarian response plan funded. This shortfall directly endangers lives and stalls recovery, he says. Unexploded ordinance is paralyzing efforts to restore essential services and infrastructures. Working in contaminated soil risks further tragedy.
“The situation throughout Syria is dire, particularly in areas that were front lines or former front lines,” he says.
A homeland filled with danger
From January to May 2025, the eastern region of Deir ez-Zor recorded 24% of all explosive incidents in Syria. The MSF-supported emergency room at the local National Hospital treated 51 blast victims in under two months – nearly half of them children. The toll includes fatalities, traumatic amputations, and other life-altering injuries.
In the nearby area of Al-Merei’iye, four children were killed. Mohammed al-Aleyy, a shepherd, spent the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha fielding condolences and holding back tears. An explosion killed his daughter Imama and his nephew Suleyman; it also blinded and maimed his son Omar.
The incident happened as the children played in the garden of a home the family had taken because their own was destroyed. It was in “good condition” near land suitable for grazing. “The lives gone are gone, but please help us for the sake of the rest,” pleads the father as his toddler daughter Obaida plays with a basic phone.
“I am scared for everyone else, for myself,” he says. “This is not a one-off incident. It is a daily occurrence. We can’t handle it. If we stay here, we are at risk. If we move to the [semi-desert] Badia region, we face the same.”
Conversation among mourners turns to the long list of familiar casualties and the tragic consequences of people trying to tackle the issue on their own. A late father of five is hailed as a hero for stepping on a mine and delaying its detonation by staying put long enough for his companions to flee with their lives. So is a particularly industrious, self-made deminer who was galvanized into action by the loss of his parents to land mines, but who later died in action.
“These mines are all over the place like flies,” says Saleh al-Muheimer, displaying images on his phone of unexploded ordinance that he and others helped remove in a 10 km area of the Badia region. “Some are clear to the eyes. Others are hidden. The challenge is networked mines and double-decker mines – when you pull on one, the others explode.”
Mr. Muheimer and his peers cleared 1,200 items of unexploded ordinance with no more than their bare hands and shovels – before reassessing the risks. As casualties climbed higher, self-led community efforts shifted to demarcating dangerous areas with piles of stones and wires so that newcomers don’t unknowingly stumble into polluted fields.
“We are demining the area with our bodies and our lives,” says Jassem Mohammed al-Ali, another shepherd. “If the international community takes no action on this, we will lose the entire community. The Syrian regime and Iran planted mines like potatoes.”
