Kampala, Uganda - Armies of well-trained rats are set to be deployed to the minefields of northern Uganda to put their keen sense of smell to good use and locate some of the hundreds of landmines left behind after a 20-year war, local media reported Thursday. The state-run New Vision reported that the rat programme can demine 100 square-metres in 20 minutes while a landmine expert can do the same work in two days.
"The concept uses the African giant pouched rats which live for eight years and have a high sense of smell," Christophe Cox, the head of Apopo, a Belgian demining group, told the New Vision.
"We train them to detect landmines," he said.
Apopo says the rats, who weigh too little to set off the mine, are trained to walk lanes in mine fields in order to sniff out the explosives. They are thought to be less expensive and less erratic than dogs, the other common animal mine detector.
It's not known how many people have been killed by landmines in northern Uganda, which were likely laid by the Lord's Resistance Army, a cult-like rebel group close to signing a peace deal with the government.
The violence has lulled in the last few years and northern Ugandans have attempted to begin a new life after war.
The Ugandan government and the UN development agency UNDP, have since 2005 been undertaking a demining programme in areas where people are returning home from camps for the displaced.
The practice has been used in Mozambique after that country's devastating civil war.
