Two killed, 37 injured in Georgia riots

May 26, 2011, 6:42 GMT

Tbilisi - Two people were killed and at least 37 injured in clashes between hundreds of opposition supporters and security forces in Georgia, media reports said Thursday.

Interior Ministry riot police used rubber batons, tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters overnight in the capital Tbilisi, Georgian media reported.

A government spokesmen identified the dead as a policeman and a former security force member. The two were run over by a car as the protesters tried to leave a main square near the parliament, where the clashes took place, officials said.

According to witnesses, police made hundreds of arrests as the crowd dispersed, and many injured people who were detained received no medical assistance.

'I don't know what's going to happen with everyone who was arrested. They are being interrogated. A great many are bloody and some of them cannot move because of broken legs. Many have smashed heads, and everywhere you can see blood,' said Interfax reporter Malkaz Chkadua after being released from a Tbilisi jail.

Police were searching for Badri Bitsadze, the husband of Georgian opposition leader Nino Burjanadze, and another senior opposition politician in connection with the collision.

Burjanadze called for the international community to punish the Georgian government for ordering a police assault aimed, she said, at physically harming peaceful protesters.

'This was a punishment operation,' she told the Maestro television channel.

Opposition activists led by Burjanadze on Wednesday began camping out in Tbilisi's central Rustaveli street to protest what they called the authoritarian and corrupt government led by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

Tbilisi's street cleaners had by mid-morning Thursday removed almost all signs of the fight between demonstrators and police, and a military parade scheduled for the afternoon appeared on track to take place on Rustaveli street.

Protester numbers had already dwindled over the course of the night from several thousand to a few hundred, news reports said.

During a weekend rally, about 10,000 opposition protesters demanded Saakashvili's resignation.