Two EU officials and their interpreter were killed in Macedonia when their vehicle hit a landmine, the first deaths of western officials in the six-month crisis there, the Norwegian foreign ministry said.
"Three bodies were found in a ravine where their vehicle was blown by a powerful mine explosion," foreign ministry spokesman Bjoern Berge told AFP.
"We're treating this as an accident," he said. Berge declined to reveal the names of the victims.
Earlier, Swedish foreign ministry spokesman Goesta Grassman said the EU officials from Norway and Slovakia, along with their translator from Albania had been killed.
"They were members of the European Union monitoring mission. It was probably a mine accident, but we don't know the exact reason for the mine exploding. It could be an accident but it could also be intentional," Grassman added in Stockholm.
An EU official in Skopje said the three EU observers had been reported missing since Thursday.
The observers were last seen near the flashpoint northwestern town of Tetovo, where ethnic Albanian guerrillas have remained active despite a two-week ceasefire, said the EU official here, who asked not to be named.
Defence ministry spokesman Marjan Djurovski confirmed the disappearance.
"According to our information, the observer team was supposed to have been carrying out a mission in the area of Mazdraca and Novo Selo" near Tetovo, he said.
"A loud explosion was heard in this zone on Thursday, after which all contact with them was lost," he said.
"It is possible their vehicle hit a mine planted by the Albanian terrorists," he said, adding that the Macedonian authorities were doing all they could to determine the whereabouts of the missing monitors.
Another Western official said that two unidentified bodies had been found in a ravine in the search area, but there was no confirmation if they were members of the monitoring mission or local people.
No further details were immediately available.
The EU official said a helicopter from the NATO-led peacekeeping force in neighbouring Kosovo was searching for the vehicle.
A spokesman for the ethnic Albanian National Liberation Army (NLA) denied any knowledge of the incident.
"We have no information that EU observers hit a mine in the area controlled by the NLA," Nazmi Beqiri told AFP by telephone.
"The Macedonian accuse us all the time, but any mines were surely planted by the Macedonian army. We are cooperating with the European observers and other international missions," he said.
The European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) is tasked with observing the crisis in Macedonia and reporting back to Brussels. The mission also has observers in Kosovo, the UN-run Yugoslav province across the northern border from Macedonia.
Ethnic Albanian guerrillas have been fighting for six months for more rights for the Macedonia's large Albanian minority, a conflict that has left dozens dead and threatened to push the country into all-out war.
In March they attacked Tetovo and were only driven off after a pitched battle with Macedonian security forces.
Since the July 5 ceasefire was announced -- designed to give talks on political reforms more breathing space -- the guerrillas have reinforced their positions around Tetovo, and even have their own checkpoints in the suburbs of the mainly Albanian town -- OSLO (AFP)
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