Accidental grenade blast kills boy at Russian school

A grenade blast Monday at a school in Russia’s restive Dagestan region killed one student and injured 11 others, the police said, adding that it was set off accidentally.

“According to preliminary information, one teenager died and 11 were hurt due to careless handling of a grenade,” the regional interior ministry said in a statement.

The blast during a computer class at the local school in Agvali, a village about 115 kilometres (70 miles) in the mountains west of the regional centre of Makhachkala, the ministry said.

A student who claimed to have found the grenade in the street brought it into the classroom, the ministry said, adding that an investigation had been opened.

An advisor to the Dagestan health minister, Zaira Kaplanova, told the TASS news agency that a 12-year-old boy had died, while other victims were being airlifted to the regional hospital with shrapnel wounds.

Dagestan in the Russian Caucasus region frequently suffers violence as local security forces battle a simmering Islamist insurgency.