A land mine explosion killed the driver of a Georgian medical aid vehicle that was accompanying European Union monitors patrolling a tense area Sunday near breakaway Abkhazia, police and EU officials said. A doctor from a Georgian medical aid group was injured in the roadside blast, Interior Ministry spokesman Zurab Gvenetadze said.
The EU monitors, who were dispatched to Georgia after its war last year with Russia, were in a separate armored vehicle that was slightly damaged but were unhurt, the EU mission said in a statement.
``We are still looking into the details of this incident, but I would like to make clear that any unprovoked attacks on our unarmed monitors and their patrols, going about their legitimate duties, are unacceptable,' mission head Hansjoerg Haber said.
Haber said the mission would contact authorities on both sides of the boundary separating Abkhazia from Georgian-controlled territory to investigate the incident ``and ensure nothing like this happens again,' according to the statement. He expressed condolences over the driver's death.
Georgian authorities said there were two land mine blasts. Nobody was hurt in the first explosion, but the occupants of the medical aid vehicle had gotten out of their car when the second blast hit, Gvenetadze said. He said the driver was hit by shrapnel and died in a hospital, while the doctor suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Authorities said they were investigating who may have been behind the explosions.
The blasts occurred in a district adjacent to Abkhazia, a separatist province where Russian forces have beefed up their forces following the five-day war last August. Russia has assumed control of the border with Georgian-controlled territory, and guards it jointly with Abkhazian forces. The EU sent monitors to patrol territory bordering breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia after Russia routed Georgian troops in the war and recognised both provinces as independent nations.
Areas near the separatist provinces are tense. Three bombs exploded near Abkhazia on June 11, injuring a railroad engineer, and a blast in the same area damaged a railroad track earlier this month.
Georgia has blamed Russian and separatist forces for shootings that have killed police posted near Abkhazia and South Ossetia since the war, but Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said it was too early to point fingers in Sunday's blasts. Shots were fired near the Polish and Georgian presidents outside South Ossetia in November, but a Polish security report concluded it was not an assassination attempt. Two unarmed military monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe were briefly detained in South Ossetia in April.