The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sounded the alarm on Wednesday about the catastrophic consequences of the scattering of mines after the collapse of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine, threatening both civilians in the area and rescue teams.

“This is a disaster. Before I knew where the danger was. From now on, we don’t know anything more,” said the head of the ICRC’s weapons contamination department, Eric Tollefsen, on the occasion of the presentation near Geneva of a new drone that uses artificial intelligence to detect mines and other explosive objects based on the heat they emit, it emits, writes Agerpres.

The drone, which could one day cover the same area as a sniffer dog in six months, has yet to be tested, apart from trials in Jordan, but the ICRC hopes to use it for the first time this year around the Syrian city of Aleppo.

In anticipation that this small device could one day fly over Ukraine, where Russia launched a full-scale invasion last year, the ICRC has been supporting demining intervention teams for several months, supporting mapping and marking operations, providing equipment and training.

But “the water has taken it all away for now,” Tollefsen lamented, as not only the marking shields are gone, but, “so seriously, the water, which is incompressible, will also take these mines.” -infantry and anti-tank, such as TM-57 and will take them to an unknown place.

“All we know is that they are somewhere downstream. This is a serious concern, because it will affect both civilians and those who come to their aid,” this Norwegian expert explained.

The number of installed mines is “colossal”

The UN already warned on Tuesday of the risks associated with mines, which are extremely abundant in the disputed region, and the ICRC is further concerned that water does not change the detonation mechanism of these explosive weapons, even after decades.

According to Tollefsen, in the Kherson region, which was retaken by the Ukrainians in November and is located downstream of the dam, in the Kherson region, “the opposing sides have placed numerous defensive minefields on the ground.”

However, the ICRC does not know how many people could have been scattered by the waters. “The parties to the conflict did not declare the number of installed mines. We just know the numbers are huge,” Tollefsen warned.

Moscow and Kyiv shared responsibility for the attack on a dam that supplied water to Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in 2014 and was a potential route for Ukrainian troops to retake the occupied territories.

The destruction of this infrastructure led to the discharge of water flows into the Dnipro, which forced thousands of civilians to leave the flooded areas, and also caused fears of an ecological disaster.

“The damage is already significant”

This destruction of the dam is “a symbol of the need to comply with international humanitarian law”, the president of the ICRC, the Swiss Mirjana Spolarich Egger, assessed on Wednesday.

“The damage is already significant,” she said, presenting mine-detecting drones to journalists.

This new tool won’t remove mines by itself, but will speed up their detection with cameras, a heat detector and an artificial intelligence program.

“It’s a breakthrough because it covers huge areas at a much higher speed” than humans or dogs, said Martin Ebens, a Danish weapons expert at the ICRC.

“During demining works, the average indicator per opponent is 50 square meters per day. According to some conservative estimates, this new tool would allow to investigate and check 100,000 square meters per day,” said the head of the ICRC.