“Mom, I will play with this red ball,” a nine-year-old Surma pleaded with her mother Monwara Begum after she picked it up from the edge of a road in the city.
“I permitted my daughter to play with the object,” she said, adding: “When Surma along with her playmate Lal Mia, 8, started playing with the red ball-like object it went off with a loud bang in her hand.”
Surma received splinter injuries to her left hand. Lal Mia was also injured in the blast.
Two children – Surma and Lal Mia – went out of their shanty at Beltola in Chittagong city on Tuesday morning to collect waste papers and materials, when they found a small bag, lying abandoned on the side of a road at Ambagan they picked it up.
Little did they know what terrible fate was awaiting them as the bag contained two crude bombs wrapped in red scotch tape. They brought the bag home.
“As Surma picked up one of the balls [crude bombs] for us to play with, it exploded,” Lal Mia said adding that they opened another ball before the second one and found some powder (gunpowder) in it.
Hearing the loud sound and screams of the children, parents of Surma and Lal Mia rushed to the spot and found their children groaning on the ground after being injured by the bombs, said Monwara and Khalek.
Later, both the children were taken to Chittagong Medical College Hospital’s Burn and Plastic Surgery unit.
Now Surma is undergoing treatment at the hospital while Lal Mia was released from the hospital after receiving primary treatment.
Dr Motaher Hossain, medical officer of the burn and plastic surgery unit, told the Dhaka Tribune that Surma and Lal Mia were out of danger.
“Since they are children, they are traumatised and extremely scared which may adversely effect their mental growth,” he observed.
Surma along with her three siblings and parents collect waste papers and other materials such as garbage and roadside dustbins for their livelihood.
Mainul Islam Bhuiyan, officer-in-charge of Khulshi police station, said miscreants left the crude bombs in a bag on the street, which caused the blasts and injury.
The children opened one of the crude bombs but it might have been dampened so it did not explode while the second one did and injured both, he said. Police are investigating the matter, OC Mainul added.
