Freshly laid mines wound four Ethiopians by border

By Ed Harris

ASMARA, April 27 (Reuters) – Anti-tank mine blasts have wounded four Ethiopians in the country’s border area with Eritrea and Sudan in recent weeks, the United Nation’s chief de-miner in the region said on Wednesday.

Tensions remain high on the frontier between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which has still not been demarcated under a peace deal aimed at settling a 1998-2000 border war between the neighbours.

U.N. officials did not speculate on who laid the mines or why, but the threat makes life more complicated both for people living in the area and U.N. troops patrolling the border.

“We have had a spate of them recently, all in Ethiopia,” Phil Lewis, programme manager at the mine action co-ordination centre, part of the U.N. Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, told Reuters.

Roughly 50 anti-tank mines have been laid by unknown people on both sides of the 1,000 km (620 mile) Ethiopia-Eritrea border in recent years, killing more than 30 people.

The four most recent mines are the first incidents this year, following just two reported in 2004, and all were in north-west Ethiopia close to both the Eritrean and Sudanese borders, Lewis said.

He said the mines had all detonated after being hit by trucks and tractors, including one Ethiopian army water truck.

In the first incident, in March, the Belgian-made plastic anti-tank mine was discovered before it did any damage, but four Ethiopians were wounded when a tractor drove over a mine in early April, said Lewis. No soldiers were hurt.

In a sign of escalating tensions, Ethiopia said last week its army killed 32 armed men sent by Eritrea to raise havoc before Ethiopia’s May 15 parliamentary elections. Eritrea denied the charge.