Nine young children – aged between four and ten – have died tragically in south-east Afghanistan, from a mine dating back to the war with the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

“Nine children were killed on Sunday when a mine exploded in Geru district, dating back to the Russian invasion, with which they were playing,” said Hamidullah Nisar, director of the Information and Culture department of Ghazni province.

Police said in a statement that the children killed were five girls and four boys.

Also on Sunday, another child was killed in the western province of Herat by a munitions explosion that injured five others, police said in a statement to X.

Fatal accidents involving explosive devices are common in Afghanistan, a country that has been at war for more than forty years.

The Soviet army invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 and withdrew from the country in February 1989, after nine years of particularly bloody conflict.

After the Taliban returned to power in August 2021 and the conflict in the country stopped, millions of Afghans managed to return to their villages and fields. But mines or other unexploded explosive devices still kill or maim people, mostly children.