Georgia pounds breakaway capital

By Margarita Antidze

MEGVREKISI, Georgia (Reuters) - Georgia pounded the capital of its breakaway South Ossetia province with heavy weapons on Thursday after a ceasefire broke down within hours and separatists said they were under siege.

"Georgian troops are storming Tskhinvali (the capital). They are bombing the city," South Ossetia's separatist leader, Eduard Kokoity, told Russian news agencies.

A Reuters reporter saw intense fire from heavy weapons at different locations skirting Tskhinvali. The reporter heard heavy fighting coming from the direction of the city.

The night sky was lit up blue and red by explosions and Georgian forces appeared to be firing Katyusha rockets.

"We have an operation under way to neutralise separatist positions from which they are shelling Georgian villages," a senior interior ministry official told Reuters in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

The commander of Georgian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, Mamuka Kurashvili, told Georgian television: "We are forced to restore constitutional order in the whole region."

Skirmishes since the weekend have deepened fears of full-blown conflict in the Caucasus, which is emerging as a vital energy transit route and where Russia and the West are vying for influence.

South Ossetia and a second rebel Georgian region, Abkhazia, --both of which unilaterally broke away from Georgia at the beginning of the 1990s -- enjoy Russian political and financial backing, ex-Soviet Georgia has allied itself with the West and is pushing for NATO membership.