In the dense hill forests along Bangladesh’s border with war-torn Myanmar, villagers are losing limbs to landmines, casualties of a conflict not of their making.
Ali Hossain, 40, was collecting firewood in early 2025 when a blast shattered his life.
“I went into the jungle with fellow villagers. Suddenly, there was an explosion and my leg was blown off,” he said. “I screamed at the top of my voice.”
Neighbours rushed to stem the blood.
“They picked me up, gathered my severed leg and took me to hospital.”
In Ashartoli, a small settlement in Bandarban district, the weapons of a foreign war have turned forests, farms and footpaths into killing grounds.
Bangladesh’s 271km (168-mile) eastern border with Myanmar cuts through forests and rivers, much of it unmarked.
It is crossed daily by villagers, as their families have done for generations, to collect firewood or carry out small-time trading.
Myanmar is the world’s most dangerous country for landmine casualties, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, which has documented the “massive” and growing use of the weapons, banned by many states.
The group recorded more than 2,000 casualties in Myanmar in 2024, the latest full year for which statistics are available, double the total reported the year before.
“The use of mines appeared to significantly increase in 2024-2025,” it said in its Landmine Monitor report, highlighting “an increase in the number of mine victims, particularly near the border” with Bangladesh.
Bangladesh accuses Myanmar’s military and its rival armed groups of planting the mines.
Arakan Army fighters, one of the many factions challenging the junta’s rule, control swaths of jungle across the border.
More than a million Rohingya refugees who fled Myanmar also live in Bangladesh’s border regions, caught between the warring military and separatist forces.
Bangladesh police say at least 28 people were injured by landmines in 2025.
In November that year, a Bangladesh border guard was killed when a landmine tore off both his legs.
Bangladesh’s border force has put up warning signs and red flags, and carries out regular mine-clearing operations.
But villagers say warnings offer little protection when survival depends on entering forests seeded with explosives, leaving communities in Bangladesh to pay the price of war.
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