MOGADISHU, November 14, 2007 - At least 10 people were killed and 15 others wounded when a truck they were traveling in triggered a decades-old mine in the breakaway Somali state of Somaliland, officials said Wednesday.

Police said the incident occurred Tuesday in Togdher region near the Ethiopian border. The device was believed to be an anti-tank mine.

"It was one of the worst mine accidents in the region," said Mohamed Harir, a Somaliland police official.

"The mine was planted decades ago, sometime when the military regime was fighting local liberation groups," Harir told AFP.

Local officials said demining in the region has been complicated due to the haphazard way in which the devices were planted.

"Mine clearance agencies have been working in the region in the past years but there still could be mines that are yet to be found," said Hussein Abdalla Hashi, a local demining official.

A former British protectorate, Somaliland united with the Italian Somalia in 1960. But it unilaterally broke away 10 months after dictator Mohamed Siyad Barre was ousted in 1991.

Source: AFP