SUKHUMI, December 25 (RIA Novosti) - A senior police officer was killed in a car explosion in Abkhazia, a self-proclaimed republic in Georgia, the Abkhaz Interior Ministry said Monday.
Otar Turnanba, a deputy police chief of Abkhazia's Gali district, died of wounds in the hospital. Two other policemen were hospitalized in serious condition.
The car was blown up with a roadside bomb on a central highway in the Gali district at 1:10 p.m. Moscow time (10:10 a.m. GMT).
However, Novosti-Georgia agency quoted Georgy Lomiya, the deputy head of the Georgian administration of the Gali district, as saying that "an armed clash occurred on a road in the Gali district between Abkhazian police and an unknown criminal gang."
Lomiya said several Russian criminal bosses visited Turnanba in Abkhazia recently and had "a very unpleasant conversation" with him.
He said three more people were killed with Turnanba in the car, adding that neither local residents, no the Georgian side were involved in the incident.
But Abkhazia's Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba said Georgia is responsible for Turnanba's death. He said it was another event in a series of recent activities "of the Georgian leadership aimed to destabilize the situation in the Gali district on Abkhazia's border."
Abkhazia's Interior Minister Otar Khetsiya also said it was a terrorist act perpetrated by the Georgian Special Services."
