Margarita Antidze

A fuel train exploded on Sunday on Georgia's main east-west rail line and police said it appeared to have hit a landmine.

Russia promised to complete a pull back of troops from Georgia by the end of Friday but said a number of ''peacekeeping forces'' would stay.

Georgia accused Russia of breaking a shaky ceasefire in their six-day-old conflict on Wednesday, a charge strongly denied by Moscow.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a halt to military operations in Georgia on Tuesday, after five days of fighting.

Russia has sent forces into Georgia to repel a Georgian assault on the breakaway South Ossetia region, with reports of ''hundreds of dead civilians''.

Fighting raged in and around the capital of Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region on Friday as Georgian troops pounded separatist forces.

Georgia and South Ossetian separatists reported a heavy battle involving artillery on Thursday in the breakaway region.

The United Nations said on Monday that a Russian air force plane shot down an unmanned Georgian spy drone over Abkhazia last month, strengthening Tbilisi's claims that Moscow is aiding the rebel territory.The UN report was the weightiest independent endorsement to date of Tbilisi's allegation that a Russian jet downed its spy plane on April 20.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili declared victory on Thursday in a parliamentary election that the opposition said was rigged in his favour and vowed to challenge by calling street protests. Saakashvili said Wednesday's vote was fair, but the rigging allegations and the threat of protests will test his claim to lead the most democratic state in the region.

Wealthy Georgian businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili, who led and financed a big opposition campaign against President Mikhail Saakashvili, has died in London, one of his aides said on Wednesday. A report on Georgian public television said the businessman had died of a heart attack.

Ex-Soviet Georgia said on Tuesday that two Russian fighter jets had violated its airspace and dropped a 700kg bomb, but this had not exploded. Shota Utiashvili, the head of the interior ministry's public relations department, said that the bomb was dropped on the village of Tsitelubani, about 65km north-west of Tbilisi.

Georgia on Monday handed over to international mediators four Russian army officers whose arrest on spying charges triggered the worst crisis in years between the ex-Soviet neighbours. As the handover was going ahead, Moscow ignored international appeals for a similar goodwill gesture and announced it would cut air, sea and land links between the two countries.