MOSCOW, July 9 (RIA Novosti)-A senior security official in Georgia's self-proclaimed republic of South Ossetia was killed Sunday in an apparently calculated assassination, the region's interior minister said.

Oleg Alborov, the secretary of the breakaway province's security council, died when a bomb detonated as he opened his garage at 7 a.m. (3 a.m. GMT).

"We view this terrorist attack as the start of a campaign declared by Georgia to eliminate the South Ossetian leadership," Mikhail Mindzayev said.

Georgia's president has sought to return the region to the fold of the country after South Ossetia proclaimed independence in 1990 and fighting broke out. Russia has had peacekeepers stationed in the conflict zone to maintain a ceasefire since 1992.