Lethal toys

Children & their parents must be educated as to what suspicious devices look like and warned against playing with them

The deaths of six children on January 26, the result of a hand grenade exploding as they played with it, has quickly dropped from the headlines. The incident took place in Baber Mela on the outskirts of Hangu. Three of the children were brothers and all belonged to families that were internally displaced originally from the Orakzai Agency. The device was in a rubbish pile, children are naturally inquisitive, and the consequences tragic for all concerned. This is not the first instance of children dying in this manner and there are several reports in recent months of men, women and children being killed and injured as they handled devices they have found. Sometimes those devices are hand grenades, on other occasions, the notorious ‘toy bombs’. These are devices that are disguised as toys and designed to lure children to play with them. The device will explode if tossed around and needs nothing more than playfulness to detonate it. Hand grenades tend to be more powerful than toy bombs, possibly a reflection of the number of fatalities in this incident.

Whatever the nature of the device, this was a truly wicked act on the part of those who planted it, knowing that children would be its likely victims. It is unlikely that this device was left there ‘by accident’. The use of explosive devices in this way is calculated to lower the morale of a population, create disabled casualties that are a burden to the family and to add a layer of terror to the lives of people. If this is shown to be the case, then an urgent campaign of awareness-raising needs to be embarked upon in schools in the area where the incident happened. Children and their parents must be educated as to what suspicious devices look like and warned against playing with them, as well as alerting the appropriate authorities if they find one. Pakistan is a deadly repository of unstable munitions and unlicenced weapons — and children the innocent victims. Every effort must be made to reverse this state of affairs.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th,  2014.

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