Brod-Posavina County was declared free of landmines on Monday at a ceremony at which Croatian Mine Action Centre (HCR) head Zdravko Modrusan presented prefect Danijel Marusic with a certificate to that effect.

After the 1991-95 war, Brod-Posavina was among Croatia’s 14 counties contaminated with unexploded ordnance. Some 203 million kuna (€27.5 million) was invested from the national budget, public companies, the World Bank and the European Agricultural Fund to clear 100.3 square kilometres of land in the county.

“Almost 1,700 pieces of explosive devices leftover from the war were found and destroyed,” Interior Minister Davor Bozinovic said at the ceremony. He added that the last reported land mine related casualty was in 2016.

“There were no land mine-related accidents since then, and I think that is the biggest success of mine countermeasures system,” he said.

The deadline for the plan to clear the remaining counties was pushed back for another seven years, HCR head Modrusan said.

Follow N1 via mobile apps for Android | iPhone/iPad | Windows| and social media on Twitter | Facebook.