A Russian military chief was one of those killed in Friday's car-bomb blast in the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, Interfax news agency reported Saturday, citing a military spokesman in Moscow. Colonel Ivan Petrik, who was the commander of the Russian troops in South Ossetia, was fatally wounded in his office when the 20- kilogram bomb went off next to a Russian army base. The spokesman was confirming a report in Saturday's Kommersant newspaper. A spokeman for the Russian state prosecutor raised the number of casualties in the attack to eight Russian soldiers killed and eight injured. The authorities had originally reported seven dead and seven injured. Initial investigations into the attack show it to have been an act of terrorism, the spokesman said, blaming the Georgian secret services for the attack, accusing Tbilisi of looking to destabilize the south Caucasus, according to DPA.
