ATLANTA, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- A report published in the British Medical Journal Online says children increasingly are at risk from unexploded military ordnance in Afghanistan.
The report says over 6,000 injuries were attributed to landmines and unexploded ordnance, which includes weapons, ammunition, combat vehicles, and equipment, from January 1997 to September 2002.
Of these, 57 percent of the injuries in 2002 were caused by unexploded ordnance compared to 36 percent by landmines, an exact reverse of statistics from 1997.
Children aged five to 14 years are the most at risk group, the report said. Almost 42 percent of the injuries caused by unexploded ordnance in children were due to the tampering or playing with explosives.
Among landmine injuries in children, the proportion due to tampering or playing was three times lower or 14 percent.
The research was done at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. It analyzed data from the surveillance database on injuries due to unexploded ordnance and landmines, maintained by the United Nations Mine Action Center for Afghanistan.
