Three children were killed and another wounded on Tuesday in southern Somalia when the grenade they were playing with exploded, witnesses and medical sources said.
The three were part of a group of young goat herders who had found an unused hand grenade near a small village south-west of the capital, Mogadishu, local elders said.
”They were playing with an old explosive device which I believe was a hand grenade they found near Magurto village,” Ahmed Sheikh Ali said.
”It exploded, killing three boys and critically wounding a girl,” he said.
Ado Mohamed, a medic in nearby Afgoye town, confirmed the deaths and said the three were aged between six and nine.
Somali children are highly exposed to mines and unexploded ordinance, after 17 years of almost uninterrupted conflict in the Horn of Africa country. Dozens of people died in accidental blasts in 2007, many of them children. — Sapa-AFP