3 Pakistani children killed while playing with unexploded bomb

Three children were killed on Friday while playing with an unexploded bomb at an abandoned house in southwestern Pakistan, near the Afghan border, police said.

According to police official Shabir Ahmed, the explosion took place in the border town of Chaman in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, some 90 miles from the provincial capital of Quetta.

Afghan refugees had previously lived in the house, but it was unclear how the bomb got there, he said. Police were investigating, Ahmed said.

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Several children are killed every year by unexploded ordnance and land mines left from years of fighting and conflicts in the region and elsewhere in Pakistan.

Millions of Afghans fled to Pakistan during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation of their country, creating one of the world’s largest refugee populations. According to a recently conducted U.N.-backed survey, 1.3 million registered Afghan refugees are still residing in Pakistan, where authorities often arrest those living without valid documents.

Scores of Afghan Taliban membershad also stayed in the region before returning home after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021.