Car sets off mine on Chile-Peru border, one dead

May 27, 2012 |

Santiago

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A car detonated an anti-tank mine on the border between Chile and Peru, killing the Peruvian driver, Chilean authorities said on Saturday.

The Chilean army said in a statement that the incident occurred late Friday in a minefield in the Arica and Parinacota region along the country's northern border with Peru.

Prosecutor Patricio Espinoza said the person killed was a Peruvian national, but did not identify the victim. The car apparently belonged to a taxi company in the Peruvian city of Tacna.

A Chilean police officer at a border post near the site of the incident said the vehicle was on a road that was closed near Chile's northern border with Peru.

"They didn't realise that they were going through an area where there were anti-personnel mines and one of them exploded," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Chilean army statement said that the area was "expressly marked according to existing international norms."

It added that de-mining personnel had opened a path on Saturday through the minefield to enable police to investigate.

Chile buried thousands of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines along the border with Peru during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

Clearance operations that began in 2002 have so far removed 14,000 mines.

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