Colombia destroyed around 7,000 land mines on Sunday, in efforts to implement the Ottawa Convention that bans the use of antipersonnel mines, according to local reports.

Reports said that the mines exploded are the last arsenal in the country, and Colombia is ready to explode thousands of the remaining mines in the ground planted by the government. The mines were destroyed in eight thunderous explosions in a rural area broadcast live on TV.

After watching the explosion through a large-screen TV in Bogota's main plaza along with Jordan's Queen Noor and US ambassador William Wood, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said that the unprecedented public act underscored Colombia's commitment to destroy eventually all state-owned mines.

However, Uribe said that rebels are increasingly using antipersonnel mines.

Queen Noor has worked to promote the destruction of land mines around the world.

Colombia has been plagued by a four-decade civil war, in which leftist rebels, far-right paramilitaries and government troops fight each other, killing about 3,500 people every year.

All the warring parties have used land mines, leaving Colombia with the forth largest number of mine victims in the world, after Chechnya, Afghanistan and Cambodia.

In 2000, the Colombian government ratified the Ottawa Convention that calls for banning and destroying all land mines worldwide by 2009.

Around three-quarters of the world's nations have signed the 1997 international treaty.

Since the treaty came into force, over 37 million stockpiled mines have been destroyed in the world.

Source: Xinhua