ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Two people were killed Monday in an explosion inside a house in Halabja province while handling the remains of an explosive, according to police.

The explosion occurred at 12:15 pm inside a house in Halabja’s Mordin neighborhood. Police teams arrived at the scene and conducted an investigation, and “it was determined that the explosion occurred while a mortar shell was being tampered with,” Halabja police spokesperson Akam Qutbaddin told The New Region.

According to The New Region’s correspondent, the victims, Sarhang Kabir and Nawzad Marif, were inside the house when the explosion occurred. The house was destroyed in the blast.

Nestled along the border with Iran in the eastern area of Halabja, Mordin was a battlefront during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s and thus remains littered with unexploded ordnance.

Landmines and unexploded ordnance left behind by successive Iraqi regimes’ campaigns to suppress Kurdish uprisings, the Iran-Iraq War, and the war against the Islamic State (ISIS) continue to claim lives every year, particularly in spring when families flock to mountainous areas for picnics.

In August 2025, a fire that raged in Mordin killed two people who were trying to extinguish it after it spread across a substantial area. Efforts to contain the blaze were hampered by the presence of landmines and unexploded ordnance in the area, Halabja’s civil defense said at the time.