PRAGUE - A police dog seriously injured a child near the Czech town of Lanžhot on the Slovakian border on Monday, reported German news agency (dpa).
According to Czech news site Novinky.cz, a police patrol stopped a vehicle carrying migrants when the incident took place.
"While following a hot trail of a fleeing smuggler, the service dog had an unexpected reaction to a sudden external impulse," the police said.
The driver fled from the car and the dog allegedly bit a four-year-old Kurdish girl in the face, according to Novinky.cz. The child was taken by helicopter to a children's hospital in Brno.
A crisis intervention team attended to the child's family. The police said they launched an internal investigation.
An interpreter told Novinky that the child and the family had travelled to the Czech Republic illegally. The Czech news outlet said current laws dictate that the entire family must leave the country once the child is released from the hospital.
In the fight against immigrant smuggling, the Czech Republic introduced temporary checks on persons at the border with Slovakia at the beginning of October. The checks have been extended until Nov 2.
While 248 suspected smugglers were detained across the country in all of 2022, according to the government in Prague there have already been more than 340 detained this year. - BERNAMA-DPA