UN calls for collection of bodies

The United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) has called on Ethiopia and Eritrea to collect the bodies of hundreds of dead soldiers left lying along the former front lines of their two-year border war. Addressing journalists from both countries via a video-link news conference from Asmara, Jean Victor Nkolo, the UNMEE spokesman, said on 19 October that the remains of at least 300 soldiers remained scattered on former battlefields within the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) that now separates the two countries. Nkolo said the rotting corpses, which had been lying there for at least a year, posed a serious health threat to UN peacekeepers operating in the TSZ, and were hampering demining operations. Nkolo called on both sides to take action to remove and bury their dead. "These are the remains of human beings who had families, who had countries and who were people," he said. "They should be given all the respect that they deserve." Both sides deny that the corpses are those of their own soldiers, and maintain that they have removed and buried all their dead.