The shootings, carried out by both sides the very day when Georgian and Ossetian military representatives met in Tskhinvali to establish peacekeeping posts with Russian troops, involved mercenaries from the neighboring North Caucasus region, where Chechnya is fighting its own separatist war with Moscow, Interfax reported, citing regional police.
The Joint Control Commission involving Georgia, Russia and South Ossetia, meeting Friday to regulate the conflict there, signed a preliminary ceasefire at midnight, with pledges from Russia to add peacekeepers to the breakaway region, which has said it wants to join Russia.
Fighting is continuing in the area, the Itar-Tass news agency reports.
Georgian Interior Minister Irakli Okruashvili said there would be no more talks following the recent attacks. Flying into Eredvi by helicopter to evacuate the wounded, he accused South Ossetia of double standards, saying the authorities in the region's main city Tskhinvali were clearly incapable of sticking to the ceasefire.
As part of the deal, the two sides had agreed to create additional buffer zones between their positions.
These would be patrolled by Russian peacekeepers and monitored by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
The commander of Georgia's peacekeeping battalion in South Ossetia, Alexander Kiknadze, said Georgian villages in the region came under heavy artillery fire in the latest attack.
He told Georgia's Rustavi 2 television that his battalion returned fire and had inflicted casualties on the South Ossetian side.
But Irina Gagloyeva, a spokeswoman for the South Ossetian authorities, said Georgian forces were the first to fire.
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