Around 225 EU monitors were deployed in October last year to patrol the de facto border regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

An explosion near Georgia's de facto border with breakaway Abkhazia killed a driver and wounded a medic on a patrol with European Union monitors on Sunday, a Georgian interior ministry statement said.

The statement said the Georgian driver died of his wounds in hospital.

A spokesman for the EU mission in Georgia confirmed the blast had hit its patrol but also said details of the incident were unclear. "We don't know the extent of the injuries," he said of the medic wounded in the blast.

Around 225 EU monitors were deployed in October last year to patrol the de facto border regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, after Russia crushed a Georgian assault on South Ossetia in a five-day war last August.

Separatist authorities have denied the monitors access to either of the pro-Russian rebel regions.

Georgian Rustavi 2 television said two explosions occurred in quick succession on a road in the Zugdidi region of western Georgia, near the Abkhaz de facto border. Television reported that the wounded medic was a Georgian national.


Reuters

http://www.worldbulletin.net/ , printed on 07.09.2010.