Rafaat Smo, deputy governor of Nineveh, told Rudaw on Saturday that a number of children played with a mortar in the Kurdish village of Omarqapchi in Bashiqa earlier in the day. The bomb, believed to be left by ISIS when it took control of the area in 2014, exploded, killing three children and injuring another.
Smo added that the mortar was not spotted before but recent rains may have uncovered it.
ISIS took control of swathes of land in Iraq and Syria in the summer of 2014 but the group was territorially defeated in both countries by 2019.
The group continues to carry out bombings, hit-and-run attacks, and abductions across several Iraqi provinces.
