"They were planted randomly and no maps were left from the previous regime," Latif said.
The mines have affected development - particularly in the oil sector because so many mines were laid in the Kurdish region in the north, around oil infrastructure.
Iraq will likely clear about 70 percent of the mines by 2018, but the process is slow because of staff shortages and other problems, Latif said. The Ministry of Defense is in charge of clearance, with help from about 20 private companies and a handful of nongovernmental organizations.
According to U.N. estimates, the contaminated sites cover nearly 700 square miles and affect 1.6 million people. Land mines and unexploded ordinance killed or injured an average of two Iraqis every week in 2009, the United Nations said. Eighty percent of them were males aged 15 to 29 years.
In a 2010 report, the Geneva-based International Campaign to Ban Landmines found that the region with the greatest number of mine-related casualties in 2009 was Asia-Pacific (2,153 casualties); Americas (682); Africa (534); Middle-East-North Africa (324); and Europe (263), for a total of 3,956 killed or maimed.
Violence has dropped dramatically in Iraq from just a few years ago, when widespread sectarian killings brought the country to the brink of civil war. But deadly shootings and bombings still occur every day.
On Tuesday, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives belt at a car dealership near the Syrian border in northwest Iraq. The blast killed three people and wounded seven, according to a policeman and a medic at Mosul general hospital, where the survivors were taken in critical condition.
