TSKHINVALI. May 5 (Interfax-AVN) - The murder of the Mindiashvilis, a native Georgian family, is being investigated in the village of Tamarasheni, near the South Ossetian capital of Tskhhinvali.
"The murder is investigated together by the South Ossetian police and by the police department of the Gori district of Georgia," Boris Chochiyev, South Ossetian minister at large and a co-chairman of the Mixed Control Commission, told Interfax- Military News Agency Monday.
Simon Mindiashvili and three his sons, Vakhtang, Otar, and Revaz, were murdered late on May 3 at a gas station the family had just purchased. The killers used a silenced assault rifle. Local residents believe that some Ossetian criminals are behind the murder.
"This is a criminal rather than an ethnic-based murder, but it has nevertheless badly deteriorated the situation in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict area, so the Mixed Peacekeeping Force has been put on higher alert," Chochiyev said.
He also said that the case was under South Ossetian Prime Minister Gerasim Khugayev's personal supervision.
The case was also supervised in Tamarasheni by Irakly Machavariani, an envoy from the Georgian president, and Zurab Khazhaliya, Georgian deputy minister of interior. Vahktang Rcheulishvili, deputy speaker of the Georgian parliament and special envoy of the Georgian president for Georgian-Ossetian settlement, was also driven by the case to Tskhinvali on Sunday.