The Kajaki Dam Incident occurred on the 6 September 2006, when 4 Soviet anti-personnel mines, left over from the

Soviet occupation of Afghanistan The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

, were detonated by soldiers of the

3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment The 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment (3 PARA), is a battalion sized formation of the British Army's Parachute Regiment and is a subordinate unit within 16 Air Assault Brigade. Roled as an Airborne light infantry unit, the battalion is capabl ...

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

. One soldier was fatally wounded, and seven others sustained serious injuries during the blasts.

Background

The troops were based at "Normandy" outpost in Helmand. They were there to protect the Afghan village of Kajaki from the

Taliban The Taliban (; ps, طالبان, ṭālibān, lit=students or 'seekers'), which also refers to itself by its state name, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a Deobandi Islamic fundamentalist, militant Islamist, jihadist, and Pasht ...

militant group.

Incident

In the early hours of the 6th September 2006, Taliban activity was spotted in the form of a checkpoint being set up by armed militants. Corporal Stu Pearson, who was commander of the Normandy outpost, was alerted by Lance Corporal Stewart Hale to the activity, and was informed that Hale could potentially engage the militants with his sniper rifle. However, they had spotted a more suitable vantage point across the dam. As they traversed the landscape towards their vantage point, LCpl Hale stood on and triggered a land mine, suffering an amputation of his lower right leg and serious injuries to his right hand, including the loss of a finger; he initially thought he had been hit by a

mortar shell A mortar is usually a simple, lightweight, man-portable, muzzle-loaded weapon, consisting of a smooth-bore (although some models use a rifled barrel) metal tube fixed to a base plate (to spread out the recoil) with a lightweight bipod mount and ...

. The remaining paratroopers in the dam began to administer first aid and a

tourniquet A tourniquet is a device that is used to apply pressure to a limb or extremity in order to stop the flow of blood. It may be used in emergencies, in surgery, or in post-operative rehabilitation. A simple tourniquet can be made from a stick an ...

while calling for support from any surrounding units and a winch from a

UH-60 Black Hawk The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is a four-blade, twin-engine, medium-lift utility military helicopter manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft. Sikorsky submitted the S-70 design for the United States Army's Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System ( ...

helicopter. This was important, as a Black Hawk has a winch to winch injured up and the downforce of the blades is low, avoiding any danger of triggering more mines in the minefield. As more troopers arrived, Hale was moved onto a small embankment on the side of the riverbed. This is when Pearson went to retrieve a water bottle left at the scene where Hale was being treated, and triggered another explosion. Corporal Mark Wright had requested a Black Hawk helicopter, equipped with a winch to winch the men out of the dam and avoid having to land a helicopter in the minefield, potentially triggering more mines. However, a Black Hawk was not available at the time, so a Chinook helicopter was dispatched. The downdraught of the Chinook's blades caused a third mine to be detonated causing further injuries.

Aftermath

Five of the British paratroopers involved in the incident sued the British Ministry of Defence for "breaching their duty of care". It was settled without trial with "seven-number figure" for Stuart Pearson, who used £600,000 pounds of those for his state-of-the-art prosthetics. Compensation was also won for Mark Wright’s family and Andrew Barlow.

In popular culture

The 2014 British film '' Kajaki (film)'' is based on the Kajaki dam incident.

References

{{Helmand Province Helmand Province War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) casualties