© Jean Mupenda
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| DanChurchAid's humanitarian mine action in Congo and regional representative Ulla Müller are in charge of the demolition of the nine year old rocket. Here, Ulla and Stanislas are ready to push the button. |
A Saturday afternoon on the main street of Kalemie, the regional representative for DanChurchAid, Ulla Müller, was approached by an officer from the local naval authorities. The Congolese Navy would like DanChurchAid to have a look at an old weapon, which they had found on their port base in Kalemie.
DanChurchAid's mine action experts in Congo
The regional representative is head of DanChurchAid’s regional office in the DR Congo, based in Kalemie. The regional office is responsible for DanChurchAid’s humanitarian assistance and development work and operates separately from the humanitarian mine action. The regional representative therefore handed over the investigation of the weapon at the port to DanChurchAid’s mine action experts.
Nine years old, rusty and highly unstable
© Jean Mupenda
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| DanChurchAid staff preparing the explosives for blowing up the rocket. |
The weapon was a high explosive anti tank rocket, which had been rusted by the water and was highly unstable after probably 9 years at the port. The rocket was impossible to move and the demolition had to take place at the port under the responsibility of operations manager for DanChurchAids’s humanitarian mine action in DRC, Andy Mattingley.
Clearing the port
On the day of the demolition the DanChurchAid team cleared the port for people with assistance from the Congolese naval army and Beninese UN troops. A boat had come in earlier the same day with goods and the port was full of people.
A difficult operation
© Amy Habumushi
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| The rocket is ready for demolition, covered in bags of sand. |
Besides lying just next to a wall that protects the port from the lake, the anti tank rocket was only meters away from a magazine for the Congolese Navy. With the aim of damaging neither of these and creating as little disruption to the locals as possible, the DanChurchAid mine action experts used the smallest possible amount of explosives and put several dozens of sandbags on top of the rocket. Secured in a container behind a building, Ulla Müller detonated the rocket.
Mine action and food security
DanChurchAid’s humanitarian mine action team currently operates in Kabalo, two days drive from Kalemie. Other areas have been cleared, such as the territory of Nyunzu halfway from Kalemie to Kabalo. Since the clearance of Nyunzu was completed, DanChurchAid has worked with food security in the area under the responsibility of the regional office in Kalemie.
DanChurchAid aims at building up the mine cleared areas through humanitarian assistance and development, and the regional office is therefore ready to start up in Kabalo in cooperation with the WFP and the FAO.
At the port of Kalemie, no one was injured and both the wall and the entire magazine were still intact.
Written by Trine Fjendbo Petersen