Kirsten Oswald – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kirsten Oswald on 2016-04-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many service personnel have suffered (a) minor injuries and (b) serious or fatal injuries as a result of mines or improvised explosive devices in the last 10 years.

Mark Lancaster

From centrally held data it is not possible to provide the exact numbers and types of injuries to UK Service personnel specifically as a result of mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). However, we can provide the numbers of personnel that died or were injured whilst on Operations TELIC or HERRICK where the mechanism was recorded as an explosion. This includes mines, IEDs, unspecified explosives and explosive accidents.

Between 1 April 2006 and 31 March 2016, 514 UK Armed Forces personnel sustained a minor injury due to an explosion. Of these, 39 personnel did not have an Initial Notification of Casualty raised and thus we are unable to determine the exact severity of the injury from the centrally held data.

964 personnel sustained a serious or fatal injury due to an explosion, of which 310 had an Incapacitating Injury, 171 were Seriously Injured, 208 were Very Seriously Injured and 275 died.

In these figures, individuals are counted once per injury. If any individual has been injured on multiple events they are counted for each event where the injury reported is not linked to a previous event. Individuals who were injured due to an explosion and later died of their injuries have been included in the number of fatalities, not injuries.