Rebel forces from Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia shot at a Georgian military helicopter and forced it to make an emergency landing, but all on board survived, a Georgian military commander said.
"A few shots were fired at the Georgian helicopter, but it managed to land on territory controlled by the Georgian side. No one died," Paata Bedianishvili, commander of the Georgian battalion in the joint peacekeeping force in the area, told Georgia's independent Rustavi-2 television channel.
Russian news agencies earlier quoted South Ossetian officials and a spokesman for Georgia's Interior Ministry as saying that the helicopter had been shot down.
"The helicopter was shot down by South Ossetia's air defences," Interfax quoted an unnamed South Ossetian armed forces official as saying. The official said she believed those on board were dead.