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No. 18198
>>3577280
Soviet–Afghan War
The PFM-1 mine was claimed to have been deliberately designed to attract children
According to a 1985 UN report backed by Western countries, the KGB had deliberately designed mines to look like toys, and deployed them against Afghan children during the Soviet–Afghan War.[34]
Newspapers such as the New York Times ran stories denouncing the "ghastly, deliberate crippling of children" and noting that while the stories had been met with skepticism by the public, they had been proven by the "incontrovertible testimony" of a UN official testifying the existence of booby-trap toys in the shape of harmonicas, radios, or birds.[35]
The story likely originated from the PFM-1 mine, which was made from brightly colored plastic and had been directly copied from the American BLU-43 Dragontooth design. The Mine Action Coordination Center of Afghanistan reported that the allegations "gained a life for obvious journalist reasons", but otherwise had no basis in reality.[34]
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