Eight killed by landmine in Nuba Mountains

Eight people were killed and two others wounded on Friday when their vehicle hit a landmine in the Nuba Mountains region of Sudan.

Walid Hamid, Director of the Nuba Mountain Governor's office, told IRIN on Monday that the explosion occurred near the rebel-controlled village of Kodiba on a road frequently used for humanitarian deliveries.

The road had been cleared by the Joint Monitoring Commission (JMC), the body in charge of the internationally monitored ceasefire signed in January 2002 between the Khartoum government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), Hamid said.

Under the ceasefire agreement, brokered by the US government, "zones of peace" were to be established in the Nuba Mountains as part of an effort to ease humanitarian aid delivery and improve trade networks for the war-affected local population.

"This is not a common occurrence. It was a road that had been cleared by the JMC and had been used quite often," Hamid told IRIN.

He said all the dead, five women and three men, worked for a local demining organisation known as OSIL. He added that he believed Sudanese government soldiers had recently laid the mine.

Muhammad Ahmad Dirdeiry, Sudan's deputy ambassador to Kenya, said he could not comment on the matter as he was not aware of the incident.

A source close to the JMC told IRIN the commission was investigating the incident. He said Friday's incident was the third landmine case in the region over the past year, but added that investigations into the last two cases had been "inconclusive".