South Ossetia has accused Georgia of breaching the ceasefire agreement and the EU of ignoring violations.

“For a week now, Georgia has been shooting daily at the border districts of Znaur and Tskhinvali,” said Irina Gagloyeva, head of the South Ossetian Press Committee. She told Reuters: “By the way, all this is happening in the presence of international monitors who – quite surprisingly to us – turn out to be blind, mute and deaf.”

Russia has already expressed its official support for South Ossetia. At a news conference the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called on EU observers to be more active in the areas close to South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

He said that the observers “prefer to just register events while the EU is a guarantor of non-use of force against South Ossetia and Abkhazia under the Medvedev-Sarkozy plan.”

He added: “Special task police units and other armed people are regularly brought  to  these  areas,  while  it  is  absolutely  clear that only a specific  number  of  police  officers are needed there to normalize the situation.”

In it's turn Georgia accused South Ossetia of deliberate exaggeration. Georgian National Security Council Secretary Kakha Lomaia told Reuters: “This escalation plays right into the hands of those who do not want EU monitors to implement their mandate of monitoring in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.”

Russia promises bases in South Ossetia by 2009