Moscow/Sukhumi, Georgia  - A border guard was shot dead in Georgia's breakaway region of Abkhazia on Monday, local agencies reported, while Russian troops said an explosion hit its convoy in a sign of ongoing violence in the EU-monitored border zones.

Abkhaz police chief for the Gali district, Laurens Kogonia, said border guard Mukhran Ashuba died in a shootout in the village of Nabakevi.

No one was injured in the blast that hit a column of Russian armored personnel carriers preparing to withdraw from a buffer zone in Georgia under the supervision of EU monitors, deputy troop commander Alexander Novitsky told news agency Interfax.

Moscow  - 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.

Seven Russian soldiers were killed in the attack and seven injured.

Moscow  - Six people were killed in an explosion in Georgia's breakaway republic of South Ossetia on Friday, Russian news reports said.

Deauville, France  - European Union defence ministers were due to meet in the French coastal town of Deauville on Wednesday as the bloc's observers began a delicate ceasefire monitoring mission in Georgia.

Some 350 observers from 22 EU countries are tasked with ensuring that Russian troops withdraw to the positions they held prior to the August conflict, as agreed in a September 8 peace deal brokered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Initial reports out of the South Caucasus indicated that the observers were having some difficulties being allowed into the buffer zones around South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Brussels- More than 300 European Union observers are already in Georgia and ready to begin monitoring the "swift withdrawal" of Russian forces, EU officials said Monday.

"We are extremely pleased with the response from member states and with the preparations" leading up to the launch of the mission, foreseen for Wednesday, said Cristina Gallach, the spokeswoman of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

"We want to monitor the swift withdrawal of the Russian troops from where they are now" and ensure that the Georgian police is allowed back into Georgian villages, Gallach added.

New York - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Saturday told the UN General Assembly that the European security infrastructure had failed in "recent events" and called for a new Europe-wide security treaty.

Lavrov said that in the conflict in the Caucasus, the "existing architecture of security in Europe did not pass the strength test in recent events."