Feb 23, Kathmandu- Two children were killed when a grenade used in airstrikes during Cambodia's civil war exploded near a home, an official said Sunday.

The explosion occurred on Saturday in a remote village in northwestern Siem Reap province, a battleground for Cambodian government troops and Khmer Rouge fighters in the 1980s and 1990s. A two-year-old boy and a girl are among the deceased.

Director General of the Cambodian Mine Action Centre (CMAC) Heng Ratna told AFP, "According to the research report, two children were playing while digging in the ground when a digging tool tripped the grenade, and the two children died due to the explosion."

According to him, one child died on the spot and another child died in the hospital during treatment. “Cambodia has completely ended the war and has been at peace for more than 25 years, but the Cambodian people are still bleeding from landmines and remnants of war,” Heng Rattana said.

The accident came as Cambodia partially suspended demining operations for several weeks after Washington abruptly halted aid after US President Donald Trump ordered a 90-day suspension of foreign aid.

Cambodian officials said on Friday that work to clear unexploded ordnance should continue after the US granted a waiver to continue funding the work in the country, a mine clearance official said. Ammunition and weapons discarded during the decades-long war that began in the 1960s are still widely found in Cambodia.

Cambodia has spent the world’s longest time clearing unexploded ordnance since the end of more than 30 years of civil war in 1998. Since 1979, 20,000 people have been killed and twice as many injured by explosives, according to government figures.

Last month, two Cambodian officers were killed while removing a tank loaded with decades-old explosives from a Cambodian rice field, and a villager was killed when an old bomb left in his field exploded.

More than 1,600 square kilometers (620 square miles) of land in Cambodia still needs to be cleared, affecting about a million Cambodians affected by the remnants of war.

Cambodia had set a goal of being mine-free by 2025, but the government has pushed back that deadline by five years due to economic challenges and new munitions discovered on the Thai border.