A politician has been shot dead and another wounded in a shooting inside the parliament of the Russia-backed breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia.
Abkhazia’s state news agency Apsnypress cited the health ministry as saying Vakhtang Golandzia had died of wounds sustained in a shooting at the parliament building on Thursday.
A statement from the press office of the acting president, Badra Gunba, also said: “After receiving fatal wounds, the deputy Vakhtang Golandzia has died.”
It added that another lawmaker, Kan Kvarchia, was hurt.
Apsnypress said the interior ministry had identified another lawmaker, Adgur Kharazia, as the suspect in the shooting, and that he had fled the scene. Its report did not give any indication as to a motive.
Russian news agencies quoted local sources also saying that another deputy had shot the two men.
A lush subtropical territory on the Black Sea coast, Abkhazia broke from Georgia’s control in a war after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, during which hundreds of thousands of ethnic Georgians fled.
Credit: aljazeera.com
