105-Year-Old Clears Mine Fields, Iran Says
A 105-year-old man who stages fasts to protest U.S. economic sanctions against Iran has joined a squad of teen-age volunteers in a “crash unit” used to defuse Iraqi land mines, Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency said Monday.
In a brief dispatch from the battlefront, the news agency said that Yaqub Noruzi volunteered for military service when Iran went to war with Iraq in September, 1980, and now serves in the “crash unit,” clearing Iraqi mine fields.
“Noruzi and other personnel of this crash unit have so far defused as many as 16 truckloads of mines planted by the Iraqi . . . troops on the battlefields,” the news agency reported, noting that the centenarian works with “teen-aged fellow combatants.”
The news agency also lauded Noruzi for regularly staging fasts “in a bid to fight the global arrogance” exhibited by the United States in imposing economic sanctions against Iran.
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