Locals say old bombs and landmines have been ‘left on the battleground.’

Six children were wounded when a bomb left from previous conflict exploded on Tuesday in a village in Mansi Township, located in Kachin State’s Bhamo District.

The blast occurred in Mang Weing Gyi village on the morning of March 5, after the children found the device in a field while tending their cows.

“The bomb exploded when the children picked it up after finding it on the grazing land. It was an old bomb,” local Zau Bawk told NMG, adding that the injured children were transferred to the public hospital in Namkham, northern Shan State.

Zau Bawk clarified that the device was not a landmine, but that there had been many clashes around the village in the past and that it was likely a remnant of past fighting.

“Old bombs and landmines have been left on the battleground. It exploded,” he explained.

According to Zau Bawk, one child was seriously injured, wounded in six different places on his body. Another, nine years old, endured wounds to his abdomen and is currently in critical condition.

“Under the instruction of the Burma Army’s division commander, he was directly transferred to the Lashio military hospital at midday,” he said on Tuesday.

The injured children range in age from five years old to 16 years old.

Locals told NMG that landmine awareness trainings—which are often only delivered in displaced people’s camps—should also be given to those in rural communities and to those near tracts of farmland where fighting once took place.

“Bomb explosions don’t happen in the deep forest. They happen on grazing land or near village or work sites,” Zau Bawk said.

Tuesday’s explosion is not the first in Kachin State this month. A woman reportedly was injured by a landmine near Ka Sont village in Mogaung Township on March 2, and a man was wounded when a landmine went off near the upper Lawah Stream in Hpakant Township on March 3.