Three stories:
From IRIN...
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.
From Reuters...
Four Ethiopian soldiers were killed and three were wounded when their vehicle hit a newly laid landmine last week near the tense border with Eritrea, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The United Nations does not know who laid the mine, less than 15 km (9 miles) from the border, but about 50 mines have been laid in both countries within the last four years.
Most incidents have been in or near the U.N.-patrolled temporary security zone (TSZ) that separates the two armies.
"Four Ethiopian soldiers died and three were injured when an Ethiopian military vehicle hit a landmine," Phil Lewis, programme manager at the United Nations Mine Action Coordination Centre in the Ethiopia-Eritrea peacekeeping mission.
The blast happened on Nov. 22 about 6.5 km (4 miles) north of a village on the road between Sembel and Badme, he said.
Badme was the flashpoint for the 1998-2000 border war which killed an estimated 70,000 people from both countries, and the road referred to is often used by both the Ethiopian military and U.N. peacekeeping forces, he said.
Earlier this month, an Eritrean military vehicle hit a landmine north of the TSZ and close to the border with Sudan, but no casualties were reported, he added.
The United Nations describes the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea as "tense and potentially volatile".
Early last month, the Red Sea state banned U.N. helicopters from Eritrean airspace to focus international attention on Ethiopia's failure to demarcate their common border.
In a peace deal to end their border war, the two Horn of Africa countries agreed an independent boundary commission would make a "final and binding" ruling on where their border should be.
But Ethiopia rejected the April 2002 ruling, and the border has still not yet been demarcated.
Eritrea says non-demarcation is the root cause of regional tensions, and accuses the international community of bias for not doing more to pressure Ethiopia.
Ethiopia and Eritrea both moved soldiers and arms towards the border after Eritrea introduced the flight restrictions.
Roughly 3,300 U.N. peacekeepers monitor the buffer zone, but the restrictions on U.N. air and ground patrols have reduced its monitoring capacity by more than 60 percent.
From AFP, reprinted on Sudan Tribune...
Four Ethiopian soldiers were killed when a newly laid land mine exploded in Ethiopian territory along the increasingly tense border with Eritrea, the UN peacekeepers said Tuesday.
The UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) said the four died last week when the military truck in which they were riding detonated the mine on the Ethiopian side of a de-militarized buffer zone between the rival nations.
"The Ethiopian military truck struck and detonated a mine with its left front wheel," UNMEE said in a report about the November 22 incident. "There were a total of seven passengers travelling on the truck.
"Four passengers were killed and three persons were injured," it said in the report, which was sent to AFP on Tuesday.
It said the incident took place inside Ethiopia on a well-travelled road between the towns of Sembel and Badme inside a 15-kilometer (nine-mile) so-called "adjacent area" patrolled by UNMEE that abuts the border.
Neither Ethiopian nor Eritrean troops are allowed inside "adjacent areas" that lie on both sides of the 25-kilometer (15-mile) wide Temporary Security Zone hugging the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) border inside Eritrea.
UNMEE said the explosion was caused by a recently planted land mine but did not say who might have laid the device.
The explosion occurred amid soaring tensions between Addis Ababa and Asmara and troop movements on both sides that have sparked fears the two nations may be on the verge of new hostilities.
Badme, about 150 kilometers (95 miles) southwest of Asmara, is a remote dusty town that was the flashpoint for the 1998-2000 war the Horn of Africa neighbors fought that claimed some 80,000 lives.
Eritrea has warned new conflict is looming because Ethiopia refuses to accept a binding 2002 border demarcation emanating from a peace deal that awarded Badme to Asmara.
The council also demanded both sides reduce their troop deployments and that Ethiopia accept the border ruling.
UNMEE has described the situation along the border for the last month as "tense and potentially volatile" as the two countries trade allegations that the other is violating the peace pact.
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