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Comment by Keyframe | Hacker News Reader

As a Croatian, I'm really glad to hear these type of news. However, also as a Croatian, I don't quite buy the news. I'm sure great progress was made but it's never going to reach 100%; It's just the nature of these damn things in combination with our geography and where the frontlines were.

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It means there are no known areas that are still littered with landmines, but yes, that's not a guarantee there aren't any.

Not Croatian but Bosnian, 2030 is our target for this milestone and we have to keep de-mining ~70 square kilometres every year to be able to hit that milestone.

I visited a friend in Sarajevo in 2014. Lovely small walkable city in a little valley, enjoyed the food and did some of the tours of old war sites inside the city and on the edge of the city. It boggled my mind then that the locals warned me not to go hiking through the pretty forest out of town because of land mines; it was hard to believe a country in Europe would have that problem in the 21st century!

The war barely ended in 1995 after all, it's not surprising.

European wars now all feel like a throwback to the 19th century. Even the maximally horrific wars of the 20th century feel outdated in light of trade being so much more efficient.

Economic aggression is a whole new kind of warfare and plenty destructive, but just saying "you stand on some dirt and we will kill you over it" is a pure waste.

People keep comparing the war in Ukraine to World War II, but they seem to imagine themselves to be Napoleon. Maybe France could have gotten richer by winning, but today that kind of attack is just lose-lose.

From America, the Yugoslavian war felt like re-fighting some Medieval grudge. I'm sure it made some kind of sense to them at the time.

> it was hard to believe a country in Europe would have that problem in the 21st century!

Bless your naiveness buddy. There are still areas in France where people can't go due to mines from WWI.

Spend some time on Google reading about the Zone Rouge.

I had never heard of the Zone Rouge, so thanks for sharing! I grew up in the USA in the 80s, and as a child, the first time I remember hearing of the problem of lingering landmines was in reference to countries such as Cambodia. Later I lived in Africa and eventually visited other continents. Of course I remember hearing of the war in Yugoslavia when growing up, but a dozen years ago when I visited Sarajevo, I certainly felt sad when the Bosnians told me about the ongoing problem because it felt like something I would have expected to be cleaned up by now in a developed country. Definitely a strong lesson on the long-term costs of war.

Germany still has areas you can't go to because of WWII landmines. Parts of the Huertgen Forest spring immediately to mind.

As German, I can say, as long as not someone used mines out of glass, they will rot away in some decades. We still have some woods where you could step on glass mines....

But happy to hear the news. Some years ago as I was urban exploring the airfield in Zeljava it has hit someone nearby the field. Happily I just saw the ambulance and the police.

TIL glass mines are a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasmine_43

How clever we are when we try to kill each other.

Hell you still find explosives from WW2 all over. It really is difficult.

Indeed. With landmines from 90's at least general areas are known, there's signage and if you're not being stupid by venturing way past signage it's all really safe to be around.

WW2? We're still finding explosives from WW1 in Belgium

No kink shaming but meanwhile in France : https://www.midilibre.fr/2026/02/01/il-debarque-aux-urgences...

It's also worth pointing out that the front lines in WWI didn't come anywhere close to Toulouse. XD

True that. I used to work in the Netherlands, and sometimes it seemed like every other week the rail network was disrupted by a newly-discovered unexploded bomb, left over from the plastering the Allied air forces gave the Dutch railways.

Just few months ago, a 1,000-pound WWII bomb was found in Hong Kong. The city had been a battlefield between Japanese and Allied forces.

https://hongkongfp.com/2025/09/19/hong-kong-to-evacuate-6000...

I agree. It is good news for Croatia but there may be some that have escaped the net.

They just found a water mine in Rovinj.

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