Blasts shake Georgia conflict zone, one killed

By Margarita Antidze

TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgian officials said six explosions struck on both sides of a de facto border between Georgia and its breakaway Abkhazia region on Sunday, killing one person.

Moscow and Tbilisi accuse each other of stirring tensions in Abkhazia, which broke away along with the region of South Ossetia from Georgian rule during wars in the 1990s. Russia provides financial support and has peacekeepers in both.

A spokesman for the Georgian-backed government-in-exile of Abkhazia said an explosion in a cafe in Abkhazia's Gali region killed Gali's security department chief and wounded 10 others.

The spokesman, Raul Kiria, said officials in Gali would not let relatives of the wounded take them to hospital in Georgia.

Earlier on Sunday Georgian Interior Ministry official Shota Utiashvili said four mines exploded near the village of Rukhi in a region controlled by Georgia.

One of them went off under a police car as officers investigated the site after the initial blasts, slightly wounding the local deputy police chief, Utiashvili told Reuters.

The fifth bomb exploded in "territory which is de facto controlled by the Abkhaz side in the village of Otobia", Utiashvili said. The site was being investigated by the United Nations mission based in the region.

Colonel Clive Trott, who was at the scene of the blast, said it looked like a mortar round.