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24 Aug, 2007 15:05

Military plane reportedly crashed in Abkhazia

A plane has been reportedly shot down over the Kodori Gorge on the territory of the Georgian breakaway republic of Abkhazia. The Georgian Rustavi-2 television channel is reporting that two local residents claim a military plane has crashed somewhere in th

They say the plane fell in the remote area of the Gorge.

Georgian Senior Interior Ministry official Shota Utiashvili said that on Wednesday Georgian forces opened fire on a military plane, which consequently crashed.

“On August 22 an unidentified aircraft has entered Georgian airspace in Kodori valley. Georgian air defence forces opened fire and in a while the population reported hearing a crash and seeing a flash and fire. Right now there is still fire at the place. We do not know whether it is a plane or not, but we know for sure that it was a hostile plane that we opened fire at. It is too early to speak about an investigation, first we need to see what is there because. We will make sure it is a plane and then we will of course launch an investigation. The experts will work at the place in order to determine what is there. We do not know yet if there’s a plan anything else. Only if we know for sure it is a plane, we will open an investigation,” Shota Utiashvili, Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman, commented.

Although the reports about a crashed plane only surfaced on Friday, on Wednesday Georgian authorities did say that they had radar evidence of a Russian plane that violated Georgian air space.

This was immediately firmly denied by Russia, and on Friday night Russian senior air force officials said that at the time when the incident allegedly took place all Russian planes were at bases and all Russian pilots in the area were resting. They described the incident as a provocation.

Meanwhile, Abkhazian authorities have not confirmed the reports.

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