The photo has been used for illustrative purpose.

Three children were killed and two others injured on Wednesday when a hand grenade they found in a field exploded in northwest Pakistan, officials said.

The four brothers and a neighbour were playing when they found the rusty grenade near a village on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar.

"The children first played with it and later hit it with a stone causing it to explode," Mansoor Aman, a local senior police official, said.
Local police official Aziz-ur Rehman confirmed the casualties.

Accidents involving discarded ordinance are not uncommon in Pakistan's northwest.

Old mortar, artillery shells and other discarded munitions are often smuggled into the country from Afghanistan, some dating back to the Soviet war in the 1980s.

Last year, five people were killed when a worker at a scrap metal shop tried to recycle an old mortar shell that exploded as he tampered with it.

Agence France-Presse