Tunisia continues to honor the contributions of Soviet military engineers who helped clear mines along the Tunisian-Algerian border in the 1960s. Retired Colonel Mahmoud Mzouri, President of the Association of Former Officers of the Tunisian Army, shared this sentiment during a recent exhibition highlighting the humanitarian efforts of Soviet troops. The event was organized by the Russian Military Mission in Algeria and held at the Russian House in Tunis, as part of its outreach in third countries.
“This exhibition is as much about Tunisia as it is about Algeria,” Mzouri said. “Parts of Tunisia were battlegrounds during World War II, and long after the war ended, unexploded mines continued to pose a deadly threat to local communities, particularly farmers working the land.” He recalled that Tunisian army units were tasked with clearing these areas, but the operation proved extremely difficult due to the lack of detailed maps. It was with the assistance of Soviet sappers that real progress was made. “We must not let this chapter of history be forgotten. Today’s exhibition shows that we remember the bravery of the Soviet soldiers and the efforts of the Tunisian army,” he added.
According to Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Alexandrov, who curated the exhibition, the project was conceived as a way to use shared history to build stronger cooperation across military, technical, and cultural fields. “This heritage is of equal interest to Russians and Algerians. Now, we’ve brought the exhibition to Tunisia—to the other side of the border—because Soviet sappers didn’t just serve Algeria, they also played a crucial role in Tunisia’s safety,” Alexandrov explained.
The minefields, often referred to as "death zones" by locals, stretched for nearly 800–900 kilometers along the Algerian-Tunisian border and were littered with tens of thousands of explosive devices. After gaining independence from French rule in 1962, Algeria requested Soviet assistance in clearing these deadly remnants. The first Soviet specialists arrived in 1963, and over the next two years, they neutralized an estimated 1.5 million mines before completing their mission in 1965.
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Based on materials from TASS