Chile rains wash landmines onto the road

In Chile, there’s no telling what the rain might wash up.

On Monday, torrential downpours exposed landmines near its border with Peru, the BBC reports.

Chilean authorities had to close the main border with Peru when the rain washed the mines right onto Route 5 North.

Bomb disposal experts detonated at least four of the devices. Authorities did not divulge the total number found. 

Chile signed the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel mines in 1997.

In 2008, it pledged to spend millions of dollars to remove thousands of landmines placed along its Argentine, Bolivian and Peruvian borders during territorial disputes in the late 1970s. 

The natural elements pitched in this time. But landmine situations are serious wherever they are found.

Unlike most other weapons, the destructiveness of unexploded mines is indiscriminate and long outlasts the conflicts for which they were planted, says the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund.