# Unexploded ordnance kills child in Khost and injures three girls
A piece of unexploded ordnance detonated in Khost province in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, killing one child and injuring three others, according to KabulNow citing local Taliban authorities.
The blast occurred around 10 a.m. in the Mardikhel area of the provincial capital, the report said. It added that the injured children were all girls and that they were taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. Authorities did not provide further details about their ages or current condition.
The incident is part of a larger and persistent danger in Afghanistan: explosive remnants of war scattered across communities after years of conflict. The report notes that unexploded mortar shells and landmines remain a serious hazard, especially for children who may mistake them for toys or scrap metal.
KabulNow's account frames the blast not as an isolated accident but as a reminder of a country heavily mine-contaminated and still paying the price of older wars. The excerpt says Afghanistan is among the world's most affected countries and cites the United Nations on the scale of the threat. It also points to a recent Save the Children report saying nearly one Afghan child is killed or injured by explosive ordnance every day on average.
The human cost cited in the article is staggering. Between January 2025 and January 2026, Save the Children documented 338 children killed, injured or permanently disabled by explosive devices, nearly 70% of all victims in that period. The report also says demining and risk education have slowed because of declining international funding, forcing some UN and humanitarian projects to shrink or close.
Those wider figures help explain why the Khost blast matters even though the immediate toll was limited to one death and three injuries. A single strike by dormant ordnance can devastate a family, and repeated incidents can shape daily behavior in whole districts where children must navigate unsafe ground.
The source does not say where the ordnance came from, how long it had been in place, or whether any clearance operations had been underway nearby. It also does not identify the child who died. The only confirmed details are the place, the time, the casualties and the hospital transfer of the injured.
That may sound sparse, but the broader context makes the event clear enough: unexploded weapons continue to maim civilians in Afghanistan long after the fighting that left them behind. The Khost explosion is another example of how the legacy of war remains active in ordinary neighborhood spaces.
