Abkhazia accuses Tbilisi of killing border guard

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A border guard from Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia was killed in a gunfight with Georgian forces on Monday, the separatist administration said, but officials in Tbilisi said they knew nothing of any incident.

Russian and Georgian forces fought a brief war in August focussed on another separatist region, South Ossetia, but in the past few months the de facto border between Georgia and the Black Sea region of Abkhazia has been relatively calm.

The reported shootout, three days after an explosion in South Ossetia killed seven Russian servicemen, underlined the fragility of a French-brokered cease-fire.

The gunfight took place in the village of Nabakevi in Abkhazia's Gali district, adjacent to Georgian-controlled territory, said Ruslan Kishmaria, the chief representative in Gali of separatist leader Sergei Bagapsh.

"We came under fire from the Georgian side. It was in the course of this shooting that the border guard was shot," Kishmaria told Reuters.

"We returned fire but we did not set foot on Georgian territory. We believe it was Georgian police special forces."

In Tbilisi, Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said: "We know nothing about this alleged incident. Georgian forces were not inside Abkhazian territory."

Months of skirmishes between separatists and Georgian troops erupted into war in August when Georgia sent troops and tanks to retake South Ossetia, which threw off Tbilisi's rule in a war in the early 1990s.

Russia responded with a powerful counter-strike that drove the Georgian army out of South Ossetia. Moscow's troops then pushed further into Georgia, including areas around Abkhazia, saying they needed to prevent further Georgian attacks.