By Enyichukwu Enemanna
No fewer than ten persons have been killed in South Sudan, including three children, after an unexploded ordnance was mistaken as a metal piece, an official announced on Friday.
Mines and other unexploded ordnance remain a major problem in South Sudan, world youngest country created in 2011 which is recovering from a five-year civil war that ended in 2018.
The commissioner of Jur River county, James Bak, confirmed Thursday’s accident in Western Bahr el Ghazal and said two other children were injured.
He said people in Jebel-Mille area were picking mangoes when they came across the unexploded ordnance and assumed it was metal scrap.
They started collecting it for sale when it exploded, he said.
“It killed seven women and three children,” The Associated Press quoted Bak as saying. The wounded children’s mothers were among those killed.
United Nations Mine Action Service says more than 5,000 South Sudanese have been killed or injured by land mines and unexploded ordnance since 2004. Hundreds of victims it says have been children.
The commissioner urged locals not to handle unknown objects, but report them instead.
