by Maya Topuria
TBILISI, Aug 17 (AFP) - Georgian and South Ossetian forces shot at and shelled each other overnight, killing a Georgian soldier and wounding three, officials said, as a ceasefire failed to hold in the breakaway pro-Russian region.
The crisis prompted Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to call for international peacekeepers, to provide security for civilians and ensure that conditions for talks on a permanent settlement were met.
"An international peacekeeping operation that is balanced and takes into consideration Georgia's Euro-Atlantic partners should be mandated in South Ossetia to provide security for the population ans ensure the conditions for political negotiations towards a lasting settlement," Saakashvili said in an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal Europe.
The latest clashes also led to a telephone conversation between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Sergei Lavrov of Russia, as US diplomats met with Russian and Georgian officials in an effort to cool tensions.
The Moscow foreign ministry statement did not specify who made the call, but specified that it focused on South Ossetia.
Repeated clashes have undermined the internationally brokered ceasefire signed late last week between Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, in an intense drive to defuse the crisis in the region.
The four casualties occurred late Monday, Georgian Interior Minister Irakli Okruashvili told Rustavi 2 television. The Russian defense ministry quoted observers with the joint Georgian-Russian-Ossetian peacekeeping force in South Ossetia as saying both sides had used shells and guns.
Witnesses "observed the first shots at 9:20 pm" (1720 GMT), the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted ministry spokesman Colonel Nikolai Baranov as saying late Monday.
Shelling ended at midnight (2000 GMT) but shooting was still going on early Tuesday, Rustavi 2 reported.
On Monday, Georgia's interior ministry said two Georgian soldiers had died after coming under mortar and automatic weapons fire from irregular forces from the pro-Russian South Ossetian territory.
The spokesman, Guram Donadze, also claimed that 15 Ossetian fighters were killed in return fire from Georgian forces, but a South Ossetian spokeswoman denied any fatalities.
"Fortunately, no one was killed," in the overnight fighting, South Ossetia spokeswoman Irina Gagloyeva was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying. However three civilians had been hurt.
RIA Novosti and other Russian news agencies confirmed the deaths on the Georgian side and said that Georgian forces had also fired shells into a district of South Ossetia's main city, Tskhinvali, as well as three other nearby villages.
A spokesman for the joint Georgian-Russian-Ossetian peacekeeping force in South Ossetia was quoted by ITAR-TASS as saying that the firing "came from both sides and involved machine guns, mortars and grenade launchers."
The United States on Monday urged all sides in the South Ossetian conflict to show restraint and restore the ceasefire.
Tensions have soared and clashes have repeatedly broken out in the area over the past two months as Georgia has stepped up pressure to bring separatist regions back under its control -- turning its attention to Ossetia after winning back renegade Adjara in June.
Inhabited mainly by ethnic Ossetians, South Ossetia has enjoyed de facto independence after an armed conflict with Tbilisi following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.