Georgia says Russian planes bomb near Tbilisi

TBILISI (Reuters) - Russian warplanes bombed a military base and radar installation near Tbilisi early Monday, Georgia's Interior Ministry said.

"There were two bombings. One at the Kojori military base and another on Mt. Makhata. As far as I know there are no casualties," Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili told Reuters.

The explosions, heard in Tbilisi's city centre, came just hours after French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner arrived for talks with President Mikheil Saakashvili aimed at trying to end the four-day-old war over the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Kouchner was scheduled to depart Tbilisi for Moscow immediately after his talks with Saakashvili. It was unclear if he left before the bombing.

Fighting erupted last Thursday when Georgia's military entered South Ossetia, a small pro-Moscow province that threw off Tbilisi's rule in the 1990s and has been jointly managed by Russian troops under a U.N. peacekeeping mandate.

Russian troops took control of the regional capital, Tskhinvali, early on Sunday and Georgia has now pulled back its forces and has offered a ceasefire and peace talks.

(Reporting by Margarita Antidze, writing by Chris Baldwin, editing by Richard Balmforth)