Friday, October 19, 2007, #200 (1467)

Abkhazia shootout leaves one dead, one injured
By Ana Datiashvili

Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili

One Abkhaz was shot dead and a Georgian policeman injured in a shootout on October 17, with Georgian and de facto Abkhaz authorities offering conflicting accounts of the incident.

Tbilisi says the clash occurred in the village of Shamgona, in functionally neutral territory close to the administrative border between Georgia and the breakaway region of Abkhazia.

According to the Georgian Interior Ministry, the violence resulted from a police operation to apprehend a man who had stolen a car in Tbilisi and was trying to take it to the breakaway region.
Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili, speaking at a press briefing in Zugdidi, praised the actions of the injured policeman, saying that the Abkhaz side provoked the shootout.

“Abkhaz criminals opened fire and one of them was, of course, killed,” Merabishvili stated.
The dead man belonged to an Abkhaz criminal group called Rukhi Mglebi (Gray Wolves), Georgian media sources reported.

De facto Abkhaz authorities, meanwhile, claimed the fatality was actually an Abkhaz border guard, killed trying to repel an attack from “Georgian saboteurs” on a checkpoint near Tagiloni, a village in separatist-controlled Gali district.

The border guard, Manuchar Arshba, was injured in the attack and died later in a hospital, according to this account.

The Georgian police officer, Bakhva Chikobava, was hospitalized in Zugdidi. Doctors said that he was not in serious condition, and was expected to be discharged soon.

Ruslan Kishmaria, the de facto Abkhaz president’s representative in Gali, suggested the incident bore resemblance to the disputed September 20 clash near Georgian-controlled Upper Abkhazia, and issued a warning to Tbilisi.

“Georgia’s attempts to ‘de-freeze’ the conflict may lead to dangerous consequences,” Kishmaria said on October 18.

In the September 20 incident, Georgian forces killed two former Russian military officers apparently leading an armed Abkhaz group. Seven Abkhaz militiamen were taken captive, and are now being held by the Georgian government.

A UNOMIG investigation’s progress report strongly contradicts Tbilisi’s version of events. Its preliminary conclusions found that the clash took place 300 meters into Abkhaz-controlled territory, and that the two killed men were shot at close or point-blank range.



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