Four soldiers killed in landmine blast

Four Ethiopian soldiers were killed and three wounded last week when their vehicle hit a newly laid landmine near the border with Eritrea, UN officials said on Tuesday. The anti-tank mine was planted around 15 km south of the demilitarized buffer zone created to separate the two countries' armies following their 1998-2000 border dispute that has continued to cause tension between the Horn of Africa neighbours. "Four Ethiopian soldiers died and three were injured when their military vehicle hit a newly laid landmine," said Phil Lewis, head of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre of the Ethiopia-Eritrea peacekeeping mission. "We do not know who was responsible," he said by telephone from the Eritrean capital, Asmara. The blast happened on 22 November, about six km on the road between Sembel and Badme, in the eastern border region. UN peacekeepers had on that day used the same stretch of the road, Lewis added. The eastern border region is one of the most tense and scene of some of the heaviest fighting during the war, which erupted in May 1998. Badme, which is administered by Ethiopia, is also the site where the war flared up. The town is claimed by both countries. Last month three people were killed and 19 injured when a bus hit another newly laid mine in the UN-patrolled Temporary Security Zone. It has not been established who planted the landmine. The UN peacekeeping force has described the military situation on the 1,000-km frontier as "tense and potentially volatile". Around 50 newly planted mines have been laid in the border region in the last four years. On 5 October, the Eritrean government banned helicopter flights by UN peacekeepers in its airspace over the buffer zone on the border with Ethiopia. Local officials also banned UN vehicles from night patrols on its side of the zone, forcing the UN to vacate 18 of its 40 posts. Diplomats estimate that around 380,000 troops are entrenched along the border. Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war, but the border between the two was never formally demarcated. A 2000 peace agreement provided for an independent commission to rule on the border. Ethiopia refused to accept the panel's decision.