The plight of land mine victims in a region of Africa has been eased a little – thanks to the generosity of a Belfast sports shop and the local paper.

About 1,000 single trainers have been sent to a refugee camp on the Zambia-Angola border, after the Belfast Telegraph published a store manager’s offer of a donation.

Gary Briers had heard of a project where unwanted shoes were sent to landmine victims, and decided to do the same with all the spares from his shop.

He asked the Telegraph to publish an article asking charities which would be interested in doing the same thing to get in touch.

Mr Briers said a woman whose daughter was a medical student there rang and offered to take 200 shoes. Then the daughter herself rang back to say she would take the lot – to help up to 1,000 leg amuptees.

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