MOSCOW/TBILISI. Aug 23 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian Defense Ministry on Friday refuted Georgian statements on the bombing of Georgian territory by Russian warplanes.
"The aviation of the Russian Air Force did not make any flights in the area of the Russian-Georgian border on Friday morning," Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky, chief of the Air Force press service, told Interfax-Military News Agency.
"No violations of the aerial border with Georgia by Russian warplanes have been registered," he stressed.
"We announce once again that we are ready to provide objective control materials to the Georgian party, and the materials prove that there have been no violations of the aerial border from the Russian side. No aircraft have crossed into Russia from Georgia either," Drobyshevsky said.
Secretary of the Georgian National Security Council Tedo Dzhaparidze said that Russian aviation inflicted intensive bomb strikes on close-to-border areas of Georgia's Akhmeta and Tianeti districts early on Friday.
He told reporters that the northern part of the Pankisi gorge and mountains of the Tianeti district had been bombed. Bombs were dropped by several warplanes for about 40 minutes.
Dzhaparidze said the incident was a provocation act and that an official protest would follow.
A spokesman for the Georgian State Border Guard Department said that "no less than four Russian planes intruded into the Georgian territory for at least 50km and dropped bombs in the vicinity of the Ilto and Iori gorges" at 5:15 a.m. local time (0015 GMT) on Friday.
Groups of the Defense Ministry and border guard troops have been dispatched to the area to find out whether anybody was hurt by the bombing, the spokesman said.