Russia's top investigator claims to have evidence that citizens from Nato member states including the US and Turkey fought for Georgia in the five-day war in August.

Asked to list the nationalities of the foreign fighters it believes were involved, Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Prosecutor-General's investigative committee said: "America, the Czech Republic, Chechnya, the Baltic States, Ukraine and Turkey."

"It was a fairly small number of people. They mainly fulfilled support roles", Mr Bastrykin told reporters in Russia's second city of St Petersburg.

Suggesting that some had conducted training for the Georgian armed forces, he said: "There were also two snipers - one from Ukraine and I believe a Latvian woman."

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He added that he considered the presence of foreign fighters a criminal offence and would raise the issue at a meeting with representatives of Interpol.

A senior security official in Tbilisi dismissed the statement and said by law only Georgian nationals could serve in the country's armed forces.

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