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Moscow — Seven Russians who had been enjoying a forest outing were in hospital on Saturday after they accidentally set off a buried piece of ammunition dating back to World War II, news agencies reported.
The incident took place Friday evening in the country’s western Kaliningrad region, near the village of Vzmorie, located along an inlet of the Baltic Sea close to the border with Poland.
"The explosion, which is believed to have been of a buried armament from the times of the Great Patriotic War, went off in the forest when a fire was lit," an unnamed security official told the RIA-Novosti news agency.
The "Great Patriotic War" is the term Russians use for the Soviet Union’s war with Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1945.
"The explosion had a force equivalent of 300 grams of TNT. As a result seven people were hospitalised with shrapnel wounds," the official said, adding that the injuries were not life-threatening.
The Kaliningrad region, a small Russian exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania, is the westernmost part of Russia.
Its capital Kaliningrad, previously the German city of Koenigsberg, was occupied by Soviet forces in 1945 and annexed by the Soviet Union, which expelled the local German population.
AFP/Expatica