Three children killed playing with mortar

Three children were killed after a mortar shell they mistook for a toy exploded in a field in Pakistan’s northwestern Swat Valley, police said yesterday.

The district was under the de facto control of the Pakistani Taliban in 20072009 until a military operation ended their rule, and has since seen sporadic militant attacks. “The shell exploded when the children were playing with it and some started hitting it with stones,” Sayed Wali Khan, a local police official in Swat, told AFP. (AFP)