TBILISI, March 1 (Reuters) - A shootout shook a village in Georgia just across the border from breakaway Abkhazia on Thursday, days before parliamentary polls in the separatist region, a representative of the Georgian interior ministry said. Shota Utiashvili said Abkhaz gunmen opened fire on activists from a Georgian non-governmental organisation after they held a media briefing in protest against the elections due on March 4. "As far as we know, they gathered journalists to tell them they would boycott the parliamentary polls," Utiashvili said. Georgian police returned fire in the clash which lasted half an hour to an hour, he told Reuters. Three activists who had crossed from Abkhazia for the meeting were detained by Abkhaz police, he said. Shooting between gunmen from Abkhazia and Georgian police breaks out sporadically on the de facto border and casualties are recorded every few months. Utiashvili said no information was available on casualties. One Georgian television channel said several people had been wounded. Abkhaz Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba told Georgian television: "There was no shooting at all." The speaker of Georgia's parliament Nino Burjanadze called the shootout "another provocation from the Abkhaz side". The pro-Tbilisi government of Abkhazia fled during fighting in 1992-93 when separatists drove out Georgian forces. Based since then in the Georgian capital, it has no real power. South Ossetia, another breakaway region along Georgia's northern border with Russia, last year voted in a referendum for independence.
