Mauritania

Casualties and Victim Assistance

Last updated: 22 September 2015

Casualties Overview

All known casualties by end 2014	203 (68 people killed; 133 injured; two of unknown status)
Casualties in 2014	0 (2013: 0)
2014 casualties by outcome	0 (2013: 0)

In 2014, no new mine/explosive remnants of war (ERW) casualties were identified in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.[1] The last recorded casualties occurred in 2012, when four casualties were recorded as the result of a single incident. One adult male was killed and three other people, including two children, were injured while collecting scrap metal in Zoueratt, in northern Mauritania.

In 2010, the Monitor recorded three casualties, two from hand grenades and a third (a boy) injured by an antipersonnel landmine. All three incidents occurred close to the border with Western Sahara.[2]

In 2015, a Mauritanian herder was killed by an antivehicle mine in Western Sahara.[3]

The National Humanitarian Demining Programme for Development (Programme National de Déminage Humanitaire pour le Développement, PNDHD) recorded 203 mine/ERW casualties between 1974 and the end of 2014 of which 29 were members of the security forces.[4] From this total, the PNDHD recorded 71 casualties between 1999 and 2014.[5]

[1] Monitor analysis of media report for 2014 (from 1 January to 31 December); and email from Lt.-Col. Alioune Ould Mohamed El Hacen, National Coordinator, Programme National de Déminage Humanitaire pour le Développement (PNDHD), 30 March 2015.

[2] Email from Lt.-Col. El Hacen, PNDHD, 17 April 2011; and see ICBL, Landmine Monitor 2010: Country Profile: Western Sahara, 21 June 2010.

[3] REMMSO (Red de Estudios sobre efectos de Minas terrestres y Muros en el Sahara Occidental), “Western Sahara: New mine victim,” August 30 2015.

[4] The last casualties were recorded by PNDHD in 2012. Email from Lt.-Col. El Hacen, PNDHD, 30 March 2015.

[5] Previously the Monitor recorded 52 mine/ERW casualties in Mauritania (19 people killed; 33 injured), since 1999. Based on analysis of the Monitor’s global casualty database 1999-2014.