Azernews.Az

TBILISI – Georgian police discovered at least two bombs on Wednesday on the premises of the private Imedi TV station in the capital Tbilisi, and officials said a criminal group run by Russian special services was responsible, Reuters reported.

Pro-Western Georgia has often complained of Russian meddling in its affairs since the countries fought a five-day war in 2008 over Georgia's breakaway pro-Russian region of South Ossetia.

In December 2010 Georgian police arrested six people for a series of bomb blasts in the former Soviet republic and officials linked the explosions to a Russian military officer.

Two more members of the group have been arrested last week.

"One of the members of this group gave us information about bombs outside the TV station," Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili told Reuters by telephone.

"Russian special forces are behind this group."

Imedi TV said in a special showed its headquarters surrounded by police.

Georgia's Interior Ministry said last year members of the group were recruited in the rebel Black Sea region of Abkhazia by a Russian military officer to carry out a series of explosions, the latest of which, in Novmeber last year, killed one person near the premises of an opposition party.

There were no other casualties in five other blasts, the first on Sept. 22 last year in the vicinity of the U.S. embassy in the capital.

Relations between Georgia and Russia remain tense since their 2008 war, when Russia crushed an assault by Georgia's U.S.-trained military on South Ossetia, launched after deadly skirmishes with separatists and months of Russian baiting.