An old field mine discovered by Children in eastern Afghanistan exploded while they were playing, killing nine, according to a Taliban spokesman.
The mine discovered by the children in their village in Gero district, Ghazni province, was from decades ago, according to Hamidullah Nisar, director of the Taliban’s information and cultural department in Ghazni.
He claimed the blast killed five boys and four girls aged five to ten.
According to the report, Afghanistan has been devastated by decades of war and is still extremely risky for children who collect scrap metal to support their families.
Many people are killed or injured when they come across unexploded ordinance.
The United Nations in Kabul said Monday that tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children, in Afghanistan had been killed or injured by landmines and explosive remnants of war.
Afghanistan experienced several years of civil war in the 1990s after the Russian troops withdrew from the country, ending their decade-long military intervention.
In a report published last year, the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC, highlighted the urgent need to boost efforts to “address the issue of weapon contamination” in the conflict-torn, impoverished country.
The ICRC recorded that 640 children were killed or injured in 541 incidents involving landline explosions and explosive remnants between January 2022 and June 2023. “This is nearly 60 percent of the total number of civilian casualties (1,092 people) because of UXO-related incidents,” the report said.
