TSKHINVALI. Sept 13 (Interfax-AVN) - South Ossetia, a Georgian breakaway republic, has started the limited mobilization of reservists and the recruitment of volunteers for its armed forces.
"The limited mobilization of reservists and the recruitment of volunteers have been announced in response to the appearance of international terrorists, who left the Pankisi Gorge, near the border of the self-proclaimed republic," South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity told Interfax-Military News Agency on Friday.
"Up to 3,000 people will be called to arms, which is about half of all the regular armed forces of South Ossetia," the president said.
"There is a need to secure the republic from the flow of international terrorists into it. Units established in the course of recruitment and selection of volunteers will be sent to mountain areas of the South Ossetian republic," Koikoty stressed.
According to information available to the South Ossetian leadership some 700 guerillas, who abandoned the Pankisi gorge as a result of the launched anti-criminal operation at the site, appeared near the self-proclaimed republic's borders.
Commenting on the issue Koikoty said that "nobody counted those terrorists but their number is huge."