"It was an accident, not a planned or terror explosion," General Akram Khan, police chief of the eastern province of Nangarhar, said of the blast in the city of Jalalabad.

Two of the seven wounded were in serious condition and the others were slightly hurt, an AFP correspondent saw in the city's public hospital.

Sayda Gull, 60, who was among the wounded, said the shopkeeper was splitting the scrap metal when he heard a big blast and then found himself in the hospital.

Decades of war and conflict have left Afghanistan littered with old mines and unexploded ordnance, which is often sold as scrap and is a cause of deadly accidents.

Over 100 people are killed or maimed every month as a result of old mines, the United Nations estimates.

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