Attempt on Abkhazia Vice President Ankvab staged

SUKHUM (Itar-Tass) - Another assassination attempt was staged on Thursday in Abkhazia on the republic’s Vice President Alexander Ankvab. Unknown gunmen opened fire supposedly from a grenade launcher on his house in the Lykhry settlement of the Gudauta district. Ankvab was wounded in the leg and arm; he got medical aid, but refused from hospitalisation.

An operative group of the Interior Ministry headed by First Deputy Interior Minister Ramin Gablaya is working at the incident site.

This has been already a third attempt on Ankvab. The two previous ones were staged when he was Abkhazian prime minister. None of the attempts has been solved, the republic’s Interior Ministry said.

Ankvab has survived three assassination attempts since he took office in 2005. In the last attack, on July 9, 2007, he was lightly injured when his vehicle was fired upon from a grenade cup discharger on the road between Sukhum and Gudauta. The Abkhazian People’s Assembly urged the government to timely investigate the attack and accused “destructive forces active both inside and outside Abkhazia” of trying to destabilise the situation in Abkhazia. The de facto Abkhazian Interior Ministry has declared a 500,000-Russian rouble reward for information leading to the capture of the attackers, who are thought to be local.