(AP)
Updated: 2007-08-26 09:48

SUKHUMI - A plane of uncertain origin has gone down over Abkhazia, a senior official of the separatist region said a day after Georgia reported that its forces fired on a plane believed to be Russian that had violated the country's airspace.

Georgia's claim Friday further escalated tensions with Russia, which had soared earlier in the month when Georgia said a Russian bomber dropped a missile on a Georgian village; the missile did not explode. In both cases, Russia denied that its planes had violated Georgian air space.

If Georgia did shoot down a Russian plane, it would be the most serious incident in years between the countries.

In the latest claim, Georgia said it fired Wednesday at a plane over Upper Abkhazia, a remote and ruggedly mountainous area adjacent to separatist-controlled Abkhazia. Authorities said the plane was believed to have crashed.

On Saturday, the chief of staff of separatist Abkhazia's military, Anatoly Zaitsev, told reporters that a plane or its fragments definitely had crashed Wednesday and that he had seen the plane himself.

"The aircraft was going down, a volley of blueish smoke was coming after it and there were two large fragments flying behind its tail from inertia for a while. One of them is believed to have fallen in the lower part of the Kodori Gorge," he said. The gorge runs from Georgian territory into separatist-controlled territory.

He did not specify what kind of plane it was. But Sergei Shamba, the foreign minister of Abkhazia's internationally unrecognized government, said the plane "most likely" belonged to Georgia, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported.

A Russian air force spokesman, Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky, said on Russia's Channel 1 TV Saturday that Georgia's claim Friday was "the latest provocation aimed against us."

Russia earlier said the Georgian claim of the dropped missile was a fabrication aimed at ratcheting up tensions over the status of South Ossetia, another rebellious region that like Abkhazia seeks to become either independent or to be incorporated into Russia.

President Mikhail Saakashvili has vowed to bring the regions back under his government's control and has further irritated Moscow by pushing for Georgia to become a NATO member. The United States and other NATO countries have given substantial military aid to Georgia which Russians widely regard as an attempt to establish a beachhead in territory that historically has been under Russian control or influence.

Two groups of independent experts that investigated the missile-dropping incident agreed that Georgian airspace was violated three times that day by aircraft flying from Russian airspace. The first team was from the US, Sweden, Latvia and Lithuania. The second team was from Estonia, Poland and Britain.

Russia has rejected those reports.