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Four illegal migrants were killed when they wandered into a minefield in northeast Greece after crossing the border from Turkey on a popular people smuggling route, a Defense Ministry official said on Monday.
The minefield, near the village of Kastanies, was signposted in English and Greek, the official said. The migrants are thought to have climbed over a barbed wire fence along the frontier under cover of darkness.
"The bodies of the four men were too badly damaged to be identified, but papers carried by two of them suggested they were Georgian," said the official, who asked not to be named.
More than 80 migrants have been killed by landmines in the area since 1994, but these were the first deaths since late 2006, according to the Landmine Monitor group.
Relations between Greece and Turkey are frosty and the border is heavily mined in places.
Under the terms of international treaties, Greece has removed roughly 80 percent of the anti-personnel mines along its border with Turkey and has until 2014 to complete the processs.
"They appear to be ahead of schedule," said Louisa O'Brien of the Landmine Monitor group, saying Greek officials had forecast the mines would be removed as early as next year.
The two eastern Mediterranean neighbors fought four major wars since Greece won independence from the Ottoman empire in 1832, the last of them between 1919-1922.
There are ongoing disputes over airspace and territorial waters in the Aegean sea, as well as disagreements over illegal migration into Greece from Turkey.
The number of migrants from central Asia and east Africa using Greece as an entry point to the European Union has risen sharply in recent years. O'Brien said Greece's track record in helping dozens of survivors of landmine injuries had been poor and it missed a March deadline to destroy stockpiled mines.
Reuters
