Moscow/Sukhumi, Georgia - A border guard was shot dead in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia on Monday, local agencies reported, while Russian troops said an explosion hit its convoy in a sign of ongoing violence in the EU-monitored border zones. Abkhaz police chief for the Gali district, Laurens Kogonia, said border guard Mukhran Ashuba died in a shootout in the village of Nabakevi.
No one was injured in the blast that hit a column of Russian armored personnel carriers preparing to withdraw from a buffer zone in Georgia under the supervision of EU monitors, deputy troop commander Alexander Novitsky told news agency Interfax.
The 300-strong mission of EU-observers arrived in the Russian- controlled security zones around Georgia's separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on October 1 to monitor a promised Russian pullback.
A car bomb on Friday killed eight Russian soldiers and four civilians in the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, highlighting persisting instability despite a ceasefire following the brief war fought between Russia and Georgia in August.
OSCE acting chairman, Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb on Monday condemned the weekend violence in Georgia and called for calm.
"The OSCE continues to seek access to South Ossetia to contribute further to building peace and security in Georgia as a whole," he was quoted by local media as saying.
