A car bomb exploded outside the Russian military’s headquarters in South Ossetia on Friday, killing seven soldiers, Russian officials and the government of the Moscow-backed separatist region said.
Georgian and Russian authorities traded accusations over the blast, the deadliest single occurrence reported in South Ossetia since the nations fought a war over the region in August. Both sides claimed it was aimed at scuttling the fragile ceasefire backed by the West.
South Ossetia’s separatist President Eduard Kokoity called the explosion “a targeted terrorist act” and claimed the Georgian State Security Ministry was behind it, Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
PHOTO: AFP
Russia’s Defense Ministry also called it a “carefully planned terrorist act designed to undermine” the ceasefire.
Georgia’s Interior Ministry accused Russian intelligence services of organizing the blast as a pretext to delay the pullout next week of Russian forces from Georgian territory surrounding South Ossetia and another Kremlin-backed separatist region, Abkhazia.
The head of the Russian peacekeeping force in South Ossetia, Colonel General Marat Kulakhmetov, said two cars were confiscated by peacekeepers in an ethnic Georgian village after a search produced guns and grenades. The cars were brought to the peacekeeping force’s headquarters in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia’s capital, where one of them — with Georgian license plates — exploded during a further search.
Four occupants of the cars, all without identification documents, were detained and also brought to the headquarters, the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Kulakhmetov said the blast was caused by an explosive device with a force equivalent to 20kg of TNT. Televised footage showed a cloud of black smoke rising into the air, and South Ossetia’s government said the blast shattered windows of nearby buildings.
The Russian Defense Ministry, which issued a statement echoing Kulakhmetov, said seven peacekeepers were killed and eight injured.
The Russian accounts were similar to those of South Ossetian officials. South Ossetia’s acting Interior Minister Mikhail Mindzayev said authorities believe the car was packed with explosives by Georgian security services as a booby trap that would go off “at the necessary moment.”
The accounts raised questions about how a car containing such powerful explosives could have been brought to the headquarters building and why the explosives were not found earlier.
There has been widespread looting and arson in ethnic Georgian villages in and around South Ossetia since the war. Residents and refugees from the area have reported the theft or confiscation of their cars by South Ossetian militias and marauders.
Despite the heightened tension that persists following the war, Russian troops at checkpoints on roads leading toward South Ossetia from Georgian-controlled territory often carry out only cursory searches of cars, glancing in the trunks and then waving the drivers through.
The explosion came as EU monitors are replacing the Russian troops — officially peacekeepers — in territory ringing South Ossetia.
Under cease-fire agreements brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy on behalf of the EU, Russian forces are to be withdraw from the territory within 10 days of the Oct. 1 deployment of the EU monitors.
But Russia plans to keep 3,800 troops in South Ossetia itself and the same number in Abkhazia — a presence the US, EU and NATO say violates its obligation under the ceasefire to withdraw to pre-conflict positions.
The ceasefire agreements also rule out the use of force, raising the possibility that Moscow could use the explosion as a pretext to slow its withdrawal, but there was no immediate sign it would do so.
Asked whether the blast would delay its pullback, a Kremlin spokesman declined to comment.
The five-day war in Georgia came after years of escalating tension, and after Russia and Georgia repeatedly accused each other of plotting to spark an armed conflict over the separatist regions.
Both accuse each other of starting the war, which erupted when Georgia launched an offensive targeting Tskhinvali and Russia sent tanks, troops and warplanes that swiftly repelled the attack and drove deep into the ex-Soviet republic.
The war and Russia’s recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states have badly damaged already severely strained relations between Moscow and the West.
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