By Tokpa Tarnue- tarnue82@gmail.com
VOINJAMA, Liberia- Years after Liberia’s 14 years of civil war, unexploded ordnance continue to be discovered from time to time, with the latest being discovered by a 36-year-old woman in northwestern Lofa County.
A hand grenade, which was among the explosive weapons used in the Liberian civil war, was what Towon Kerkula discovered on March 8,2023 in a house. the country’s civil war officially ended in 2003.
According to the Weapons Law Encyclopedia, “the term explosive ordnance is used and defined in Protocol V to the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. In common usage, the term is sometimes used as a synonym for munition.”
According to Madam Kerkular, she discovered the grenade while she was digging a hold to fix her bed made of stick in her room with a cutlass.
She told a team of police investigators headed by Detective Armilton Kollie that she hit the grenade with a cutlass and pulled it from the hold not knowing what it was.
“I decided to take it to a friend to help me identified what it was and in the process, others who came around said it was a very dangerous bomb,” the woman noted.
She had earlier planned to sell what she was as just an iron to a scrap buyer in the community, but later expressed gratitude to other community members who told her not to do so because it was a grenade.
The grenade in question was then immediately taken to the Community Watch Forum (CWF) chairman of the town, David Yarkpawolo and the youth leader Joseph Gormatee who later presented it the local authorities into the bush in a coffee farm where they placed it and barricaded the area.
Citizens in the area were strongly advised and warned by the police about how dangerous is the said grenade was to everyone and that they should all stay away from the area where the grenade was temporarily place, while the Police are making all necessary contacts with authorities concerned to get it from the town and have it defused.