Military bomb kills 4 boys

By RAWLINGS OTIENO and CYRUS OMBATISome desks at Maroroi Primary School will be empty today after a mortar bomb left behind on a field by soldiers during a training exercise killed four pupils.
The school is in Ol Maroroi village near Ngong town, some 40 kilometres from Nairobi. A fifth child is fighting for his life at a city hospital where he was rushed to on Sunday afternoon.
The children, aged between six and 12 years, are relatives with two of them siblings. They picked up the deadly 40mm mortar bomb and played with it, not knowing what it was.
The field where the deaths occurred is near the village.

CLOCKWISE: Stephen Leteyoia, 7, and Joel Sindania, 5, died in the blast; A relative cries after viewing the four bodies; the bomb which was left by soldiers after training in Maroroi, Kajiado North disrict. [photos: COLLINS KWEYU/ STANDARD]

The incident raises questions over the conduct of the military personnel who use the field for training, and why they do not pick up bullets and unexploded ordinances from the field after finishing their exercises.
The last group of soldiers to train at the venue were said to be from the Kenya Airforce.
Locals and police said the soldiers were there for two days about two weeks ago.
The village was in mourning last evening, as senior police officers trooped there to collect the badly disfigured bodies.
Those killed were identified as Letuya Salash, 12, Joel Salash, 8, Sunguya Keshu, 9 and Boniface Masenka, 7.
Body bagsThe bodies were still lying at the scene several hours after the incident, as police waited for body bags to carry them to the mortuary.
"You know they are badly disfigured and hence we cannot carry them just like that," said a police officer.
Panai Keshu, 12, is in hospital with badly damaged legs. The explosive that hit their faces, abdomen and legs disfigured those who died.
When police arrived at the scene they were informed there was another unexploded mortar bomb lying on a path almost a kilometre away.
The team had to abandon the first scene and rush to secure the area where the unexploded bomb was found, to ensure no more people die.
According to the area chief John Tupana, the explosion was heard several kilometres away.
Tupana said they rushed there and found the bodies a few metres apart from each other before they rushed Panai to hospital.
"We realised the other four were dead. We call upon those who train here to always comb the field to clear such explosives before they leave," he said.
Mortar bomb not grenadeHe said the children were taking livestock home after a daylong grazing mission, when they came across the mortar bomb bomb.
The administrator added that the children ignorantly started to play with the explosive before it went off, killing all four.
A bomb disposal expert who spoke to The Standard said it was a mortar bomb and not a grenade as locals thought earlier.
Tupana said they had picked many live bullets from the area and handed them over to authorities in the past weeks.
Tupana said the incident was the first serious one in years, saying the last similar accident occurred in 1980, when a woman was injured.
Nairobi Area deputy PPO Moses Ombati said they would investigate how the explosives were left there. Given that the matter touches on military personnel, it is likely the Military Police will be involved in the investigations.
"It is unfortunate the explosive has killed innocent children, and that is why a team wants to establish how and why they were abandoned there," he said.
Bomb disposalOfficers from CID’s bomb disposal unit led by the head Eliud Lagat arrived at the area and collected samples of the exploded mortar bomb saying they were yet to know the origin.
The officers said they would destroy the unexploded mortar bomb.
The Ngong incident is not the first one to happen in Kenya. In Samburu where local and military personnel from Britain usually train, bombs and other explosives are usually found abandoned.
There have been protests in the area over the explosives amid calls on authorities to take precautionary measures to deter such deaths.
The two communities in Samburu had sued the British government for injuries caused by military ordinances allegedly left behind by their British Army.
More than 200 accidents have been recorded in the area where the British forces have been carrying out exercises, with 90 percent of them involving children.
The pastoral communities living in Samburu have filed a suit in London through a civil rights law firm Leigh, Day and Company advocates as for compensation.
Yesterday, we could not any comment from the Kenya military on the bomb that killed the four children.