Global General

Georgia blows up Soviet memorial, two killed

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-12-20 14:47

TBILISI: A mother and her eight-year-old daughter were killed in Georgia on Saturday when workers blew up a towering Soviet war memorial.

The demolition, to make way for a new parliament building, has already been condemned by Georgia's opposition and by Russia, which fought a brief war with Georgia last year.

Russia said it was "sacrilege" and accused Georgia of pursuing a "manic drive to erase the historical memory of its own people."

The victims were killed by lumps of concrete sent hurtling into the courtyard of their home in the country's second city of Kutaisi, local media said. Reports said four other people were in a serious condition in hospital.

Georgia's chief prosecutor, Murtaz Zodelava, said Saturday's detonation had "resulted in tragedy".

"According to preliminary information, security norms were violated," he told a televised news briefing. He said the detonation was carried out by a private demolition company.

Kutaisi city officials could not be reached by telephone.

Diggers had begun tearing into the 46-meter-high (150 feet) concrete and bronze monument earlier in the week, at the site of the proposed new parliament building.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili says he wants to move parliament sessions to Kutaisi in a bid to revitalize the former industrial hub in the west of the former Soviet republic.

But Georgia's opposition said the demolition reflected an indifference to public opinion by Saakashvili, who has made overcoming Georgia's Soviet past his signature policy since taking power on the back of the 2003 "Rose Revolution".

Some 300,000 Georgians were killed while fighting in the Soviet army during World War II.

"The Georgian government has carried out an act of state vandalism, insulting the feelings of any civilized person," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Georgian Rustavi 2 Television said Saakashvili had brought forward his return to Georgia from Copenhagen, where he was attending UN climate talks.

One part of the monument, a statue of a naked Georgian horseman in front of the main concrete structure, had already been removed, and authorities said it would be relocated within Kutaisi, 236 km (147 miles) west of the capital Tbilisi.

The dispute has echoes of Estonia in 2007, when Russia reacted furiously to the removal of a statue of a Soviet Red Army soldier in the capital, Talinn.

Relations between Georgia and Russia show little sign of improving since Russia crushed an assault by US ally Georgia on the breakaway region of South Ossetia in August last year.