- Sputnik International
World
Get the latest news from around the world, live coverage, off-beat stories, features and analysis.

S.Ossetian villages shelled ahead of presidential inauguration

Subscribe
Several villages in South Ossetia came under fire Saturday ahead of a ceremony to inaugurate the self-proclaimed republic's president elect, but no casualties were reported.
MOSCOW, November 25 (RIA Novosti) - Several villages in South Ossetia came under fire Saturday ahead of a ceremony to inaugurate the self-proclaimed republic's president elect, but no casualties were reported.

South Ossetia, which broke away from Georgia in a bloody conflict in the early 1990s, reelected the incumbent Eduard Kokoity for another term in a presidential ballot held two weeks ago along with a referendum on independence.

The head of South Ossetia's Information and Press Committee, Irina Gagloyeva, said Dmenis and several other rural South Ossetian communities had been shelled from the village of Eredvi, predominantly populated by minority ethnic Georgians, for about 40 minutes.

"Despite the fact that no one was hurt, the Ossetian side qualifies such actions as an attempt to destabilize the situation in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict zone in the runup to the inauguration ceremony for South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity," she said, adding that the Ossetians did not fire back.

Security was tightened up in the capital, Tskhinvali, and on the border with Georgia ahead of Saturday's inauguration.

South Ossetians voted overwhelmingly for independence of their tiny Caucasus region in the November 12 plebiscite, not recognized as legitimate by Georgia or any foreign country. "The 'referendum' contradicts Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders," the European Union said in a statement.

The Georgian leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, has been struggling to bring the separatist province back under central government control ever since he came into power on the back of mass opposition protests against alleged vote rigging in 2003.

Newsfeed
0
To participate in the discussion
log in or register
loader
Chats
Заголовок открываемого материала