Prince Harry in Diana’s footsteps with landmine walk in Angola

The Duke of Sussex has followed in the footsteps of his mother, Princess Diana, as he visited a charity clearing landmines in Angola.

“Children should never have to live in fear of playing outside or walking to school,” said Prince Harry, about the continuing threat of mines to the civilian population.

Prince Harry was in Angola supporting the work of the Halo Trust, the charity that had been backed by Princess Diana on her high-profile visit to the Central African country in 1997.

The image of the princess walking through a minefield, in a visor and body armour, had brought worldwide attention to the danger caused by mines left behind after wars had ended.

Prince Harry visited a village near to a minefield and met children who are given lessons in how to avoid detonating the explosives.

The Halo Trust has cleared 120,000 landmines in Angola, left over from years of civil war.

An estimated 60,000 people have been killed or injured by mines in the country since 2008 and about a thousand minefields are still to be cleared.

“The remnants of war still threaten lives every day,” said Prince Harry, patron of the Halo Trust.

He also spent time with the British charity during a visit to Angola in 2019 when he walked through a partially-cleared minefield and set off a controlled explosion.

Earlier this week, Prince Harry met Angola’s President Joao Lourenco, where the prince welcomed the government’s renewed support for the charity’s work.

James Cowan, the Halo Trust’s chief executive, said: “We will continue our work in solidarity with the Angolan people until every last mine is cleared.”

In January 1997, Princess Diana had been photographed in Angola in what became a symbolic image of the efforts to stop the harm to civilians from landmines.

She had walked on a path cleared through a minefield and had given her support to calls for an international ban on the use of landmines.

That had sparked a row, with the princess being criticised by some politicians for her views.

But the minefield where she had walked in 1997 was cleared and the site is now a thriving community, with local children attending the Princess Diana School.