Four Russian servicemen were abducted from a peacekeeping contingent patrolling the borders of Georgia's breakaway Abkhazia region, officials said on Tuesday.
Lieut. Klimenti Tevzadze, a Georgian official in the peacekeeping headquarters, told independent Rustavi-2 television that unknown captors had seized three officers and a soldier on Tuesday in the Black Sea province.
"They were taken in the direction of the sea," Tevzadze said. "Nothing else is known now."
The Interfax news agency quoted a spokesman for Russia's Defense Ministry, Col. Nikolai Deryabin, as saying that the servicemen were believed to have been abducted by a Georgian guerrilla group.
An Abkhazian security official, Zurab Agumava, said the soldiers had been taken to the Zugdidi region of western Georgia, Inter fax reported. Abkhazia, in Georgia's far northwest, has had de facto independence since 1993, when two years of fighting with Georgian troops ended. Georgia has proposed giving Abkhazia broad autonomy, but the separatists want full independence and peace talks have stalled. Scattered violence continues in the republic. Bureau Report