MOSCOW. March 26 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian Defense Ministry has blatantly refuted media reports claiming that Russian peacekeepers staged a mop-up operation in the Anaklia village in Georgia's Zugdidi district overnight to Tuesday.
In particular, the reports quoted the Zugdidi district prosecutor's office as saying that a village resident had been taken to hospital with gunshot wounds. Village residents claim that "Russian peacekeepers involved in the operation were drunk, opened chaotic fire and then started taking all villagers including old men and children out of their houses to check IDs."
"Land Forces Commander and Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Kormiltsev has just received a detailed report of Major General Alexander Yevteyev, chief-of-staff of the Collective Peacekeeping Forces in the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict zone, on the incident in the Anaklia village," a spokesman for the Land Forces command told Interfax-Military News Agency.
The report said that on Monday afternoon 12 drunk residents of the village started a fight with three servicemen of the 309th observation point who were collecting wood on a forest margin. The commander of the observation point sent an APC to the scene of the fight but when it arrived the attackers drove away in three cars.
"No fire was opened in the incident, the peacekeepers did not enter the village and certainly did not carry out mop-up operations," the spokesman said.
At the same time Klimenty Tevzadze, commander of the Georgian peacekeeping troops in the conflict zone, told Interfax- AVN that he would head for the site with an investigation team of the prosecutor's office. "If early reports are confirmed the Russian peacekeeping headquarters will receive an official protest against illegal actions of servicemen," he said.
A group of Georgian parliament members demanded on Tuesday that the country's leadership "took measures in response to rowdiness of Russian occupational troops in Abkhazia."