3 Afghan kids killed, 4 wounded in explosion

Three Afghan children have died and four others have been wounded after coming across an unexploded mortar shell while playing in a field in the southern Kandahar Province.

The governor of the province's Panjwayi district, Fazal Mohammad Ishaqzia, said all the children who were killed in the Wednesday incident belong to the same family. Another local Afghan official added that all of them were under the age of 12.

According to a recent United Nations report, “children are bearing the brunt of the conflict” in Afghanistan.

In 2014, more kids were killed or maimed in Afghanistan since monitoring of those statistics began in 2007, according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s latest report on children and armed conflict in the country.

“The killing and maiming of children from the indiscriminate use of IEDs [improvised explosive devices] in populated areas, and the use of children as suicide bombers, can only be condemned as flagrant violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” Leila Zerrougui, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, said in a press release on the report.

The report, released on Thursday, says 2,302 children were killed, and 5,047 injured from September 2010 to December 2014, most of whom were killed or injured in 2014 alone.

“These tragically high casualty numbers show that children are bearing the brunt of the conflict, and unfortunately this trend continues with the deterioration of the security environment into 2015,” Zerrougui added.

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