Land mines in North Africa

German-Italian forces withdrew from Egypt and Libya to Tunisia, and the Americans arrived in North Africa on 8 November 1942, during Operation Torch to assist the British.

The old maps are not enough because, according to the scientist Ayman Shabana, "many mines have moved due to floods, climate changes or the movement of sand dunes over half a century.

During the Libyan civil war in 2011, Muammar al Qadafi's regime laid land mines to check the advance of the rebel forces.

[10] In the 1990s, about a dozen explosives removal teams worked in the former battle fields in Libya to defuse land mines and duds.

Since the European countries were unwilling to assist with the removal of these explosives, the Libyan government was forced to cover the expenses for this dangerous work.

This was because of the vast numbers of land-mines that Italian and German sappers laid, one of which killed Major-General Edouard Welvert, commanding the "Constantine" Motorised Division, as they were entering Kairouan".

Several thousand people have been killed or injured as a result of stepping on land mines, as have numerous Sahrawi livestock (goats and camels).