Eleven people were reported killed Thursday in fighting in the separatist Georgian region of South Ossetia as Georgia and Russia continued to joust over who was to blame for the conflict. Speaking on television, Interior Minister Iraki Orkuashvili said there was heavy fighting in the region overnight and said Georgian troops had killed and recovered the bodies of eight Cossacks fighting with South Ossetian rebels.
| "We could tell they were Cossacks. They were wearing those hats..." |
The corpses however were not seen by independent sources, and a spokeswoman for the breakaway South Ossetia administration denied the Georgian claim.
| "Nope. Nope. Never happened. Nope." |
"The Georgian interior minister's statement that eight Cossacks were killed near Tskhinvali last night is not true," spokeswoman Irina Gagloyeva said, quoted by Interfax news agency.
| "Maybe the were Kazaks. Or Veps. Or Urdmurts. But they weren't Cossacks." |
Gagloyeva told AFP that two local police officers were wounded in the fighting but "no one was killed." Separately, Georgia revised downward its own earlier report that six Georgian troops were killed in the fighting, saying that in fact only three had died. An unnamed Georgian defense ministry official quoted by Interfax news agency said seven servicemen were also wounded, two of them seriously. |