Breakaway Region and Georgia Both Announce Bellicose Moves

The breakaway region of Abkhazia said Thursday that it launched airstrikes to thwart what it called invasions of its territory, hours after Georgia said it was sending troops toward the tense Black Sea region.

Abkhazian leader Vladislav Ardzinba appealed to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to prevent war, asking the Russian leadership “to thwart Georgia’s policy of state terrorism” and calling for international sanctions against Georgia, Ardzinba spokesman Ruslan Khosyg said.

There was no immediate reaction from Putin’s office, but the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement blaming Georgia for escalating tensions in the mountainous region in northwestern Georgia.

Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia nine years ago and drove out Georgian forces in a 1992-93 war that ended in a cease-fire and the region’s de facto independence. Under that agreement, Russia deployed 2,500 peacekeepers in the area.

Mounting tensions have raised fears of a renewal of the war in which Georgian troops fought Abkhaz separatists believed to have backing from neighboring Russia.

Khosyg said Abkhazian planes had struck at a group of Chechen and Georgian militants who had crossed into Abkhazia and were active around Sugar Head mountain in the Kodor Gorge.

Georgian Defense Minister David Tevzadze announced that Georgian troops were being sent to the Kodor Gorge.

In Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, about 1,000 ethnic Georgian refugees from Abkhazia held a rally near President Eduard A. Shevardnadze’s office.

Shevardnadze told the crowd he would abide by any parliamentary action demanding a pullout of Russian peacekeepers.

Later, parliament voted 163 to 1 in favor of a Russian withdrawal.