ATHENS - Two illegal migrants died and a third was injured late Sunday in a minefield explosion in Evros, the northeastern Greek prefecture bordering Turkey, the Greek army said.
One of the migrants killed was a Mauritanian national but the other could not be identified, the army said in a written statement Monday.
The third migrant, who is being treated for unspecified injuries at a local hospital, was identified as an Iraqi.
The three migrants, all male, entered a minefield near the village of Kastanies at 9:20 pm (1820 GMT). The minefield was marked in fluorescent signs in both English and Greek and was ringed with a double fence, the army said.
An operation to remove the bodies and rescue the injured Iraqi was completed early on Monday.
The incident is the first recorded this year. Seven migrants or suspected migrants died in Greek minefields in 2004, according to Greek army announcements.
In September 2003, when Athens and Ankara jointly ratified the Ottawa convention on anti-personnel mines, Greece said it would begin clearing its border with Turkey of minefields starting from September 2004.
According to Greek military sources, removing the minefields from an area crossed by thousands of migrants seeking refuge in the West could take 10 years. Greece has some 1.2 million mines in this area, the sources said.
Athens mined its border with Turkey in 1974 following the Turkish invasion of north Cyprus.
04/04/2005 11:22 GMT