Shevardnadze Escapes Injury Amid Shelling : Combat: Georgian leader has second brush with death this week in fighting over Abkhazia.

Rebel gunners turned their sights on Eduard A. Shevardnadze’s villa Friday with a barrage that included a shell that narrowly missed the Georgian leader.

The brush with death came just five days after a shell fired by Abkhazian separatists exploded near the former Soviet foreign minister as he toured the region to rally his troops.

Shevardnadze remained in this provincial Abkhazian capital after the attack, but hundreds of panicked residents tried to push their way onto the first plane to fly out of the besieged city in a week.

The 65-year-old Georgian leader has been in Sukhumi to stiffen the resolve of the city’s defenders and focus international attention on the civil war in the former Soviet republic.

“I will not leave Sukhumi . . . and will stay beside the heroic defenders of the city,” Shevardnadze was quoted as saying after Friday’s incident.

Fighting broke out in August after Shevardnadze sent in troops to quash Abkhazia’s declaration of independence. The conflict in the Black Sea region has killed more than 2,000 people, including at least 500 in the past week. On Tuesday, Georgia declared martial law in the province.

Georgia’s military said the estimated 2,000 Abkhazian troops around Sukhumi had targeted Shevardnadze, using the code name “white head” in radio messages describing his movements.

About a dozen shells landed Friday morning near the villa Shevardnadze is using as his temporary headquarters.

One shell hit the villa while he was inside, but Shevardnadze was not hurt, said Soso Margishvili, head of the Georgian armed forces press center.

In New York, the U.N. Security Council asked Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on Friday to send a special envoy to mediate a truce and to deploy 50 observers once a cease-fire is reached.