Mozambique: Two children killed, three playmates injured as grenade they were playing with explodes

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Mozambique: Two children killed, three playmates injured as grenade they were playing with explodes

2:26 CAT | 26 Nov 2020

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Lusa]

The police believe the grenade may date from the Mozambican civil war (1977 to 1992).

Two children died and three others suffered serious injuries when a grenade they found in a field vegetable garden exploded.

The incident occurred a week ago, near Zimpinga, in Gondola district in the centre of the country, where the children, aged between five and 12, found the hand grenade and tried to open it with a nail.

Cecília António, mother of three of the five victims, told Lusa that, with no classes due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the children had gone to pick mushrooms for food and to sell.

They took the grenade home and tried to open it, ignoring the sparks that started to appear and even appearing “happy with their discovery”, she said.

“They kept on trying, a second and a third time. Suddenly, it exploded, making a lot of dust.” She ran to pick up the children lying on the floor, two of them dead, she added.

The woman, who lost a son and now cares for two of the three children in the surgery wing of Chimoio Provincial Hospital, said she saw the children trying to open the object, but “had no idea what it was”.

Nesse Joaquim, mother of the third child hospitalised, says that all the children could be discharged by Friday.

The police believe the grenade may date from the Mozambican civil war (1977 to 1992). “It was the explosion of a device in an almost obsolete state which killed the two children,” Manica Police spokesman Mateus Mindu said.

This area was declared mine-free by the United Nations Operation in Mozambique (ONUMOZ), established at the end of the civil war.

Source: Lusa