Weeks after the Taliban took over Afghanistan, families who fled the fighting in one southern village returned home to find something strange: the cricket ground had been circled in rocks painted red and white.'

White, it turned out, meant it was safe for children to play. But red was a sign of buried landmines and other ordnance -- the explosive remnants of war that have killed or maimed tens of thousands of Afghans over the past four decades.'

The village of Nad-e-Ali in Helmand province became a front line in the final days of the war between the Taliban and Western-backed government forces in Kabul.'

It was besieged for two months until the Islamists took control of the country in mid-August.

When its residents returned in September, they found the village school riddled with gunfire, its roof blackened by smoke, and the children's swings reduced to just a metal frame.

They also found that the area had been "totally mined" in the fighting, according to Juma Khan, the local coordinator for the HALO Trust, the main mine-clearing NGO operating in Afghanistan.

Source: Voice of America