Report: Prosecutors call blasts on Russian pipelines sabotage

JANUARY 22, 2006
International Herald Tribune
By Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili - Associated Press

MOSCOW Two explosions early Sunday on pipelines running through southern Russia cut the natural gas supply to Georgia and Armenia, the Emergency Situations Ministry said, and the Interfax news agency reported that prosecutors opened an investigation into sabotage.
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The explosions hit two pipelines in the region of North Ossetia, not far from the border with Georgia, [...] would take two to three days to complete repairs.
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The cutoff put Georgia, which has faced extreme energy shortages for more than a decade, face to face with a fresh crisis as it headed into a cold snap.
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[...]. Because of the Russian supply cut, two out of four units of Tbilisi's main electricity generating station were switched off [...].

The temperature in Tbilisi on Sunday was minus 5 Celsius (23 F).
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Georgian Energy Ministry officials headed to neighboring Azerbaijan on Sunday to negotiate the start of gas supplies on a pipeline between the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, and the Georgian port of Batumi. It would take three days to get that pipeline operating [...].

Russian gas transits Georgia to reach Armenia, which sends back some electricity to Georgia. Electricity supplies from Armenia were cut Sunday in response to the gas cutoff.
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