Abkhaz Police Official Killed in Gali

Alik Khishba, chief of the Abkhaz police in the village of Otobaia in the Gali district, was murdered on December 26, authorities in breakaway Abkhazia have confirmed.

The news comes a day after Abkhaz warlord Otar Turnanba, a deputy chief of the Abkhaz police in the Gali district, died in a land-mine blast near the village of Chuburkhinji in the Gali district.

Interior Minister of breakaway Abkhazia Otar Khetsia told the Abkhaz news agency Apsnipress that Alik Khishba was killed when the police station in the village of Otobaia was attacked at dawn on December 26. He said that the attackers took Khishba?s corpse to the administrative border with Georgia near the village of Ganmukhuri, where Khishba?s dead body was found later on December 26.

Georgian media sources reported that Khishba was killed while inspecting the scene of the explosion in which Otar Turnanba died.

Abkhaz leader Sergey Bagapsh said that the series of ?terrorist acts? in the Gali district was masterminded by the Georgian secret services, which indicates that ?Georgia has turned into a terrorist state and the international community should know about it.?

He alleged that Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili was visiting Zugdidi, a Georgian town at the Abkhaz administrative border, before the series of attacks on the Abkhaz police officials took place.

?The Georgian special services supplied so-called Georgian guerrilla groups with arms. We have no doubt that the recent terrorist acts in the Gali district were authorized by the Georgian leadership,? Bagapsh said.

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