Excelsior Correspondent
SRINAGAR, Feb 3: Four boys were injured, one of them seriously, when a mysterious explosive went off in a bonfire they had alighted this morning in North Kashmir’s Bandipora district.
Police said that a mysterious low intensity explosion occurred in a bonfire that was alighted by the boys in the fields of village Aragam, Chatti Bandi in North Kashmir district of Bandipora while they were playing.
Police said that 4 boys received injuries in the explosion who were shifted to the hospital for treatment. Among the injured two boys Momin Ahmad Rather son of Ghulam Qadir and Amjad Ahmad Khan son of Ghulam Noorani were shifted to Bone and Joints Hospital, Srinagar for treatment. Condition of one of them is stated to be critical while other one is out of danger.
Police have registered a case and are investigating the cause of the explosion. This is not for the first time that explosions took place in this area due to littered explosives.
It may be mentioned here that a girl was killed while two others were critically injured in a powerful explosion in the forests of Lolab in the frontier district of Kupwara on December 12, last year when they were collecting firewood.
The girls were collecting firewood from the forests of Shahabad, Varnov in Lolab area of North Kashmir’s Kupwara district when an unknown explosive went off killing one girl and injuring two others.
Earlier on December 11 last year, a woman, Afroza Begum, 27, wife of Abdul Majid Magray of village Keegam was injured in an explosion. She was collecting firewood in the forest area when an unknown explosive device went off injuring her critically. The forest area where she was collecting firewood is adjacent to the army headquarters of Kupwara based 28-Division.
In the past few years, littered explosives, shells and live ammunition has led to death of more than 28 persons and caused grievous injuries to 30 people across the state.
Investigation into such deaths have found that majority of those killed and injured were children. The children, according to police, are caught unaware as they take the abandoned explosives and ammunition as playing items. It also came to fore that many of the children were handicapped for life due to such explosions.
To avoid such deaths, the State’s Home Ministry had last year asked the police, army, and other paramilitary forces to draft a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for avoiding the loss of human lives after IEDs remain undetected due to non-clearance of debris at encounter sites.
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