By empty (1/27/2004 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Six people were killed early on Tuesday when an armed gang attacked a Georgian village near the border with the breakaway region of Abkhazia, a senior police officer said. The attack was the first such serious incident since President Mikhail Saakashvili was sworn into office in the volatile Caucasus state Sunday. The armed group, numbering six or seven men, carried out their raid on the village of Lia after crossing the internal border from Abkhazia region which has had de facto independence from the central government since the early 1990s.