Three people, including an army personnel, were killed by a handheld grenade that exploded during a demonstration in a village in Nigeria's central state of Niger, a police spokesman said Sunday.

The army personnel was holding the grenade late Saturday in his Bari village of Bangi district, demonstrating to his kinsmen how the Nigerian military used grenades on terrorists in the country's northeast region when it exploded, Bala Elkalla, the spokesman of Niger State police told Xinhua.

The grenade killed two villagers and injured four others who were onlookers at the scene, Elkalla said.

The police spokesman said the army personnel who was serving in Maiduguri, the capital of the restive northeastern state of Borno, had obtained permission to travel to his village.

Normalcy has returned to the village following the incident which brought panic to the locals, a Xinhua correspondent said.

Local police had drafted personnel of the anti-bomb unit to the village and the residence of the late soldier to conduct a search "just in case there are more explosives", said Elkalla.

Source: Xinhua