Soviet-era bomb found in Afghan garden, police say

An unexploded Soviet-era bomb weighing 500 kilograms was found in a private garden in eastern Afghanistan and safely detonated, police said Thursday.

Khalid Sarhadi, a police spokesperson in Ghazni province, said a resident found “a suspicious object” on Wednesday in the garden area inside the yard of his house in Sir village.

Sarhadi said security forces and a demining team from the Danish Refugee Council went to the home. He said the bomb was moved to a mountainous area and detonated safely.

The United Nations Mine Action Service says more than 45,000 Afghans have been killed or injured by explosive remnants of war and mines since Soviet troops withdrew in 1989. Nick Pond, head of the Mine Action Section of the UN mission in Afghanistan, told AFP in June that the number of teams deployed to tackle unexploded ordnance had been cut by 64 percent over the past two years.