Eight people including three UN observers were taken hostage early today on the border between Georgia and the breakaway region of Abkhazia.
A Georgian administration official said Russian troops accompanying the observers had raised the alarm after being released by the unknown assailants who seized the UN monitors.
The UN observers were kidnapped in the Kodorsky Gorge, where they were patrolling the buffer zone that separates Georgian forces from Abkhaz rebels.
Two German soldiers are among the small group. Germany has 11 troops with the UN Observer Mission in Georgia, set up in 1993 to supervise the ceasefire between Georgia and Abkhazia.
A Georgian official in the capital Tbilisi said earlier that three UN observers had been seized by unknown assailants with an interpreter and four Russian peacekeepers as they patrolled a buffer zone separating Georgian and Abkhaz rebel forces.
