TBILISI, Aug 13 (AFP) - Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania said Friday that he came under attack from South Ossetian troops while visiting the separatist region on a peace mission.
He told Georgia's private television that no one was hurt in the attack. The station showed footage of gunfire as he passed through an area that saw three Georgian soldiers killed Thursday.
"They were shooting directly at us," he said. "I see this as Ossetia's response to our peace initiative.
"Both Ossetian and Russian peacekeepers knew that only my convoy was passing through that region at the time," he said.
Zhvania went to its northern separatist region, which is trying to join Russia, late Thursday amid Georgian efforts to win back its control.
Those attempts have so far led to shootouts between Georgian, Ossetian and Russian troops, which are also acting in the region as peackeepers.
The pro-Moscow region's self-declared president denied his forces were responsible for any attack.
The village of Eredvi, where the incident occurred, "is controlled by Georgian troops," Eduard Kokoity told Russia's Interfax news agency. "There was no shooting from the Ossetian side, and we view this as a provocation."
At least five villagers were reported injured at Eredvi in shooting that started early Friday morning, according to Georgian television.
The station claimed the attack came from the Ossetians in yet another exchange of accusations in the escalating conflict.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili raised the prospect on Thursday of "ethnic cleansing" in the separatist region after fighting there left four soldiers dead and around 40 people injured.
A senior Russian official also sounded an alarm over the latest developments in South Ossetia, a territory located along the Georgia-Russia border which has enjoyed a measure of de facto independence since fighting a war with Tbilisi in the early 1990s.
Russia has proposed an emergency meeting of a tripartite Georgian-Ossetian-Russian commission charged with resolving the dispute and appealed in the meantime for an immediate ceasefire.