A grenade explosion on a busy bridge on the Nigeria-Cameroon border has killed at least nine people and injured 26 others.
The governor of Cameroon’s Far North Region, Midninyawa Bakary, told the BBC the blast happened when a small child – believed to be under 10 – found a grenade in a bin and mistook it for scrap metal.
The boy who was playing with the grenade was amongst those who died, a resident of Gamborou told the BBC.
According to the Cameroonian governor, all the dead were Nigerians but there were several Cameroonians among the wounded.
The injured have been taken to a local hospital – some had their limbs blown off, according to witnesses in the town of Gamborou on the Nigerian side of the border.
The grenade exploded on the busy bridge linking the two countries on Monday afternoon.
The area is an important hub for traders linking north-eastern Nigeria with Cameroon.
It is not clear how and why the device was left in a bin, but both Nigerian and Cameroonian security forces have been fighting the militant group Boko Haram and its splinter faction, the Islamic State West Africa Province, in the area.
