BRITAIN’s Prince Harry visited Angola on Wednesday to back landmine clearance efforts, retracing the steps of his late mother, the charity leading the project said.
The southern African nation hosts the continent’s largest minefield, a legacy of the 27-year civil war that began after independence from Portugal in 1975.
The Duke of Sussex visited a remote village in the southeast to “deliver life-saving messages to children,” the Halo Trust mine-clearing organisation said.
“The Duke repeated simple phrases in Portuguese, including ‘stop, go back and tell your elders’ to prevent children from detonating lethal devices,” the British charity said in a statement.
Harry’s mother, Princess Diana visited Angola in 1997, walking across a cleared minefield near the central city of Huambo during a lull in the civil war.
The iconic trip came just months before her death in a Paris car crash. Harry was 12 at the time.
In a scene echoing his mother’s visit, Harry on Wednesday donned a protective visor and bulletproof vest to walk through demined shrubland, before taking part in a bomb detonation exercise.
“Children should never have to live in fear of playing outside or walking to school. Here in Angola, over three decades later, the remnants of war still threaten lives every day,” he said.
At least 60,000 people have been killed or wounded by landmines in Angola since 2008, according to the Halo Trust, which has cleared more than 100,000 bombs in the country.
Most casualties occurred in 2002 and 2003, when Angolans returned to their homes after peace was declared.
Diana was famously photographed meeting some of the victims during her visit.
Since launching operations in Angola in 1994, the Halo Trust has cleared landmines from an area nearly the size of 7,000 football pitches.
Harry’s visit follows another in September 2019 when he retraced his mother’s steps in Huambo.
The prince, 40, met Angolan President Joao Lourenco on Tuesday to discuss demining efforts.
