Abkhazia leader survives assasination attempt

FILE In this Saturday, Aug. 27, 2011 file photo, Alexander Ankvab, the president Georgia's breakaway province of Abkhazia, smiles during a news conference in the provincial capital of Sukhumi. Ankvab survived an assasination attempt on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel, file)

FILE In this Saturday, Aug. 27, 2011 file photo, Alexander Ankvab, the president Georgia's breakaway province of Abkhazia, smiles during a news conference in the provincial capital of Sukhumi. Ankvab survived an assasination attempt on Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel, file)

Published Feb 22, 2012

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Sukhumi, Georgia - The leader of the Moscow-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia survived an assassination attempt on Wednesday during an ambush which killed one of his bodyguards.

Unidentified attackers hit Abkhaz leader Alexander Ankvab's convoy with a roadside bomb as he was travelling from his home village to the rebel region's main city of Sukhumi and then opened fire. It was the sixth time that he had survived an attempt on his life.

“According to preliminary information, after a land mine placed in the way of the president of Abkhazia's motorcade exploded, the cars were fired on from a grenade launcher and a machine-gun,” an unnamed security source told Russian news agency Interfax.

A firefight then broke out between the ambushers and Ankvab's security detail, wounding a bodyguard who later died in hospital.

Abkhaz television pictures showed a burning car and abandoned automatic weapons in the wake of the attack which injured three other bodyguards but left Ankvab unharmed.

“I was not hurt,” Ankvab told Interfax.

An official at Ankvab's administration told AFP that the Abkhaz leader came to work after the incident as usual.

“The president appeared calm at work, answering questions from journalists who came to him and receiving people angered by what happened. Ankvab had a normal working day,” the official said.

The local official news agency Apsnypress reported that it was the sixth time that Ankvab has been targeted by attackers in the volatile region in recent years but none of the cases have so far been solved.

There were several rallies across Abkhazia staged by people angered by the violance, demanding that the authorities find the culprits this time.

“The perpetrators must be found and punished. This is terror against the republic,” one of the organisers of a rally in Sukhumi, Mizan Zukhba, told Apsnypress.

Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich described the attack as “an attempt to destabilise the situation in the republic ahead of the forthcoming parliamentary elections there”.

An article published by Apsnypress however linked the assassination attempt to Ankvab's efforts to eradicate corruption and lawlessess in the tiny war-scarred Black Sea region.

“Those who managed to survive the troubled post-war period and want to go on putting their hands in the state budget should understand that there is a limit to everything,” the article said.

Abkhaz separatists declared independence after waging a civil war with Georgian forces in the 1990s following the break-up of the Soviet Union. The conflict killed several thousand people and drove 250,000, mostly ethnic Georgians, from their homes.

Moscow recognised Abkhazia as independent in the wake of Russia's brief war with Georgia in 2008 and permanently stationed thousands of troops at military bases there Ä a move Tbilisi describes as occupation.

But with the exception of a handful of far-flung states, the rest of the world still regards Abkhazia as part of Georgian territory.

Ankvab was elected leader of Abkhazia in August last year after the death of Sergei Bagapsh, who had led the breakaway region from 2005. - Sapa-AFP

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