TBILISI, February 10 (RIA Novosti) - The three Russian officers detained by Georgian police on Wednesday and later released cannot leave Georgia as their passports have not been returned, the Russian Embassy in Georgia said Friday.

The Georgian authorities ordered the Russian officers to leave the country in 24 hours and handed them over to OSCE observers this afternoon.

The embassy said the officers' military IDs and national passports had not been returned to the officers but the issue was being discussed.

A new whirl of controversy between Georgia and Russia erupted after the arrest of three Russian peacekeepers Wednesday in Georgia for allegedly entering the republic through the Roksky tunnel that connects North and South Ossetia without visas. The peacekeepers were entitled to investigate the incident, which began February 1 with a road accident involving a convoy of peacekeepers and a car owned by a Georgian driver. After the accident, hundreds of armed Georgian policemen and soldiers arrived on the scene and confiscated the Russian truck until compensation had been paid.

After violence erupted between Georgia and the breakaway republic of South Ossetia in the early 1990s, Russian troops were stationed in the conflict zone as part of the Joint Collective Peacekeeping Forces.