Secretary of National Security Council of breakaway South Ossetia Oleg Albarov died after an explosive went off while he was opening a door of his car garage in the capital Tskhinvali in early hours of July 9.

“It apparently was a remote-control bomb,” Mikhail Mindzaev, the Interior Minister of breakaway South Ossetia, told Interfax news agency.

He also accused the Georgian side of behind the Albarov’s murder.

Vice-Premier of the unrecognized republic Boris Chochiev also accused Tbilisi and said that murder of Albarov is part of the Georgian side’s “destabilization plot.”

“We have been claiming for a long time already that the Georgian side was going to stir tensions ahead of the G8 summit in St. Petersburg [scheduled for July 15-17],” Chochiev said. 

Russian Maj. Gen. Marat Kulakhmetov, the Commander of the Joint Peacekeeping Forces stationed in South Ossetia, told Itar-Tass news agency that the terrorist act was a well-planned provocation to undermine situation in the conflict zone.

Officials in Tbilisi have strongly denied allegations. “It was a provocation which aims at destabilizing situation in the conflict zone,” Giorgi Volski, the Georgian Deputy State Minister for Conflict Resolution Issues, said.

“It is not in the interest of the Georgian side to eliminate certain officials in Tskhinvali,” MP Nika Rurua, Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Defense and Security, told InterPressNews agency.

He also alleged that Albarov’s murder was a result of fight between separate criminal groups operating in the breakaway South Ossetia, which are interlinked with the authorities of the unrecognized republic.