8-year-old girl killed in pressure bomb blast

An eight-year-old girl was today killed when a pressure bomb, suspected to have been laid by Naxals, went off in a dense forest pocket in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district, police said.
The incident took place in Muraliguda forests on the under-construction Konta-Banda road when the victim, Muchaki Anita, was heading towards her village Kanhiguda along with her mother, Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police Santosh Singh told PTI by phone.
The girl and her mother had gone to the weekly market at Konta and were returning home by foot in the evening.
Near Murliguda, the girl inadvertently stepped on a pressure improvised explosive device (IED) planted beside the road. The IED went off, killing the minor on the spot.

"The explosion was so powerful that her body was blown to pieces," the ASP said from Sukma, around 400 km from here.
The girl's mother escaped unhurt as she was a little away from the spot, he added.

On getting information about the incident, security forces were rushed to the place and the body of the victim was brought to Konta, Singh added.
Anita was a Class III student at Bhejji Ashram school in Konta, a tehsil town in the insurgency-hit district.
Separately, security forces today recovered a powerful IED - weighing about 10 kg - from Gorkha forests under the restive Bhejji police station area of Sukma, the ASP said.