Demolition experts blew up nearly 20,000 anti-personnel mines in western Afghanistan Thursday in a growing effort to rid the country of weapons left over from two decades of fighting, officials said. A total of 19,179 mines collected from militia units in and around the city of Herat were detonated in a huge explosion near the city on Thursday morning, the largest event of its kind since the fall of the Taliban three years ago. Afghanistan joined the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, or Ottawa Convention, on Sept. 11, 2002, and has until February 2007 to destroy its entire stockpile of mines under a program sponsored by Canada, the United States and the United Nations. Under separate disarmament efforts, the country has already demobilized about half of the country's estimated 60,000 militia fighters to make way for a new national army and rounded up thousands of heavy weapons.
