Maputo — Three people lost their lives on Sunday, in Ndunda neighbourhood, in the Beira central Mozambican city of Beira, following the explosion of a device which may have been a land mine.

The victims are aged between 18 and 22.

According to Monday's issue of the independent daily "O País', three other people were seriously injured and are currently receiving intensive care at Beira Central Hospital.

It is believed that the victims, who were playing football in an old storage room, found the explosive device and, without knowing the function of the instrument, they tried to open it up. It then exploded.

Last year, residents of Mafarinha neighbourhood, on the outskirts of Beira, detected an anti-personnel mine and a 60-millimeter mortar shell in a field where construction work was under way.

Lately, authorities and residents of some districts in the northern province of Cabo Delgado have been detecting anti-personnel explosives believed to have been placed in the region by Islamist terrorists.

During Mozambique's years of warfare, first against the Portuguese colonial regime, and then against the Rhodesian and South African racist regimes, it became one of the most heavily mined countries in the world.

In 2015, Mozambique was declared free of land mines, after two decades of intensive mine clearance. But this did not mean that every last piece of unexploded ordnance had been detected and destroyed.

The residual explosives are still in Mozambican soil, and still pose a potentially lethal threat.