Four children die in blast in Nepal; abandoned weapon suspected

NEPAL: A blast in a remote part of Nepal has killed four children, police said on Friday, with suspicion it was caused by old ordnance left over from a decade-long Maoist insurgency.

The children, aged from five to 13, had taken cattle to graze in a forest in the northwestern district of Rolpa on Thursday when they found a device and played with it, probably mistaking it for a toy, said police official Shanta Kumar K.C.

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“It may have been abandoned during the conflict,” he said. Authorities were investigating.

The Maoist rebellion began in Rolpa in 1996 and caused 17,000 deaths before ending with a peace deal in 2006. The former rebels are now part of the ruling Nepal Communist Party.