TBILISI. May 23 (Interfax) - The Georgian Interior Ministry has issued a statement saying that on Sunday morning a group of drunken participants in a protest action outside of the Public TV office in Tbilisi attacked three police officers sitting in a police vehicle.
The police officers required medical assistance. Several participants in the protest were detained, the ministry reports.
It added that 11 protesters were detained in Batumi on Saturday for throwing stones and other objects at the building of Ajarian TV and breaking windows.
Earlier on Sunday Nino Burjanadze, a leading figure in the opposition Popular Assembly, told the press that hundreds of opposition activists had been arrested in the past two days in several Georgian cities.
Irakly Batiashvili, another leader of the Popular Assembly, said that opposition activists near the Public TV office in Tbilisi had tried to get back retired general Giya Uchava whom the police had grabbed.
The footage screened by Georgian TV channels shows how up to 20 opposition activists were hitting on the police vehicle with plastic pipes and trying to get an elderly man out of it. A car drove in the direction of a police cordon at high speed after which the special police shot rubber bullets and gas charges at the opposition activists.