Children killed in explosion

Two children have been killed while playing with an unexploded rocket-propelled grenade, the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) said on Thursday. The blast occurred on 13 September, but has only just come to light. It took place inside the 25-kilometre wide Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) between Ethiopia and Eritrea, near the town of Tserona in the central border region. Phil Lewis, who heads the peacekeeper’s Mine Action Coordination Centre (MACC), said the youngsters had entered an unmarked minefield where they found the grenade. “The two children had gone into a minefield and picked up a rocket-propelled grenade, an unexploded piece of ordinance, and were playing with it when it went off and killed them both instantly,” Lewis told journalists. De-miners are working in the area, but the region is one of the most heavily mined in the world: there are an estimated 600 square kilometres of mined areas in the TSZ alone. “And it is impossible to mark and fence them all,” Lewis said before adding that MACC was constantly marking out new mined areas as warnings for local communities. The two children are believed to be nomadic Afar pastoralists who had travelled with their families from the Red Sea to the area in search of pasture for their animals. “This is probably why the children had no idea of the danger they were in when they were playing with this item,” Lewis said from Asmara. He added that nomadic groups posed “a conundrum” to MACC which carries out regular mine risk awareness programmes for villages in the TSZ. He said his team were working to ensure the future safety of the minefield where the children were killed – adding they were the first casualties at that site. The UN Security Council praised MACC in their latest report and called on both countries to “pursue” work on mine clearance. UNMEE also stated during the weekly briefing that some 34 two-metre-high pillars were to be built in the 400-kilometre eastern stretch of the border where demarcation will start. Lewis said his teams were expected to start clearing sites for the pillars next week, estimating it would take them around three weeks to check all the sites. He added that MACC had already carried out preliminary checks to ensure the safety of demarcation staff and they would continue re-checking areas. He said that “theoretically” demarcation could start the same day they cleared the first pillar site. But diplomats close to the peace process told IRIN that it is unlikely that demarcation of the contested border will take place in the early weeks of October.