A bomb blast killed the top security official in Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region on Sunday, heightening tension between Tbilisi and pro-Moscow separatists.
Oleg Alborov, South Ossetia's security council chairman, died when a remotely controlled explosive device detonated as he was opening his garage, the rebel region's Emergencies Minister Boris Chochiyev told Reuters.
"South Ossetia's law-enforcement bodies believe that an act of terror was committed, and its traces lead to Tbilisi," he said. "This is an ordered killing."
Tbilisi reacted angrily, dismissing the accusations. "We have nothing whatsoever to do with this killing," said Giorgy Kahindrava, the Georgian minister in charge of dealing with the regions that have broken away from the Caucasus state. Pro-Russian South Ossetia and Abkhazia provinces threw off central Georgian rule after fighting wars against Tbilisi in the early 1990s. Former imperial master Moscow has troops in the region and supplements the rebel states' budgets.
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