TBILISI. Aug 28 (Interfax-AVN) - Any attempt to put up armed resistance to forces located in the Pankisi gorge will be immediately prevented, Georgian Interior Ministry Troops Commander Major General Georgy Shervashidze said on Wednesday.
"If armed people located on the territory do not lay down arms or put up armed resistance they will be eliminated," Shervashidze told Interfax-Military News Agency.
According to him, "the situation on the territory is stable, no excesses took place so far and strongpoints control the situation. Mobile groups will start patrolling the gorge in the near future in accordance with an earlier elaborated plan."
Georgian State Security Ministry spokesman Nika Laliashvili told Interfax-AVN that "the gorge might host several criminal groups which general number does not exceed several tens of people."
At the same time a source in the Russian Defense Ministry said that "the Georgian State Security Ministry data is absolutely different to what we have. At present the Pankisi gorge has several hundreds of Chechen guerillas and foreign mercenaries including a unit of warlord Ruslan Gelayev."