Tensions flare in Georgian breakaway region after attack wounds three police officers

A spokesman for South Ossetia's government said that assailants opened fire from a Georgian-controlled village on police posts in the regional capital Tskhinvali with mortars and grenades. Three policemen were wounded, two seriously, said the spokesman, Andrei Tatayev.

"This is a provocation by a Georgian sabotage group," he said.

Georgian authorities denied any involvement in the attack. "There is a version that this is an internal settling of scores between South Ossetian illegal armed groups," said Mamuka Kurashvili, commander of Georgian peacekeeping forces in the region. He added a joint group involving the separatist and Georgian sides, Russian peacekeepers and international monitors would investigate the incident.

Since a 1992 cease-fire ending fighting between Georgian and South Ossetian forces, the territory has been in a tense limbo - officially part of Georgia but under the control of an internationally unrecognized government that seeks to make South Ossetia part of Russia.

Pro-Western Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has vowed to bring South Ossetia as well as another separatist region, Abkhazia, back under Georgian control; South Ossetia's officials vow just as firmly that that will never happen. Allegations frequently flare up that Georgia is planning to retake South Ossetia by force.

In summer 2004, clashes erupted after a military buildup on both sides that followed a Georgian operation to combat the smuggling of goods through South Ossetia. Sixteen people were reported killed.

The Georgian government accuses Russia, which has deployed peacekeepers to South Ossetia and Abkhazia, of supporting the separatists in a bid to prolong its centuries-old domination of Georgia and derail Tbilisi's hopes for NATO membership. The Associated Press

/The International Herald Tribune/