Russian warplanes attacked three locations in Georgia’s Pankisi gorge region on Friday, killing at least two people, a representative for Georgia’s border guard service said, quoting local residents.
The planes entered Georgian airspace around 0315 GMT and attacked in the Kakhetinsk region of the lawless Pankisi gorge which Russia believes is used as a rear base by hundreds of Chechen rebels, a representative said.
Officials were being sent to the region to check the report, he said.
Russia immediately denied that its planes had been operating in the region, but Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze warned that ”if the attacks continue, Georgia will have to use every possible means to put an end to them,” the Interfax news agency reported.
Georgian Security Minister Valery Khaburdzania, quoted by Interfax, said that ”10 Russian helicopters” bombed the Ilto gorge, adjacent to the Pankisi region, and that a woman and a child were feared dead ”in the bombing of the village of Bukhrevi.”
The secretary Georgia’s National Security Council Tedo Japaridze, also quoted by Interfax, said that the ”intensive bombardments” had lasted 40 minutes.
Tbilisi will make an official protest at the ”provocation,” he said.
Georgia has accused Russia of violating its airspace on five previous occasions in recent weeks.
Russia has rejected the accusation on each occasion, but one attack was confirmed by the Organisation for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE), a pan-European security body.
”Russia’s air forces have not carried out any operations near the Russian-Georgian border early on Friday. There was no violation of frontiers,” a representative for the air force Alexander Drobryshevsky told Interfax.
”The Georgian side has been making these claims of air space violations and attacks in the Pankisi gorge, but has not provided any evidence of them,” he said.
A representative for the Russian border guard service said it had ”not detected any overflight of the Russian-Georgian border by any planes,” the RIA Novosti news agency said.
Moscow charges that the Georgian authorities have done nothing to prevent rebel incursions into neighbouring Chechnya from its territory, and has threatened to launch a military operation against the rebels it claims are sheltering among the 7 000 refugees said to be living in the region.
Russian troops are attempting to put down a separatist insurgency in Chechnya. – Sapa-AFP