Four die in Georgian car bomb blast

A powerful car-bomb exploded outside a police station in Georgia today, killing at least four people.

The car blew up near police headquarters in the town of Gori, the closest regional centre to the breakaway South Ossetia region. Gori lies 60 miles west of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.

The force of the explosion badly damaged about 10 nearby cars and also damaged the police building, the Georgian Interior Ministry said.

Russia’s Interfax news agency, citing a ministry source, said five people were killed – three police and two bystanders.

Gori is the capital of Georgia’s Shida Kartli region, which is adjacent to South Ossetia – one of two separatist regions that have run their own affairs since wars with Georgia’s central government in the early 1990s.

Since his election in January 2004, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has vowed to reunite his country by bringing the breakaway regions back into the fold, and constant tension between South Ossetia and the central government flared into deadly violence last summer.

Georgia has also been plagued by violent crime, often linked with its large shadow economy, since the Soviet collapse of 1991.