"Four Georgian saboteurs were killed early this morning near the village of Kvais in Dzhavsky region," South Ossetian information committee head Irina Gagloyeva said, without providing further details.
A Georgian interior ministry spokesman told AFP he had no information about the incident.
Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are locked in so-called "frozen conflicts," and have been a major source of tensions between Moscow and Tbilisi, which have been locked in a diplomatic crisis since late September.
Georgia accuses Russia of backing both regions' breakaway governments of the two regions, while the Kremlin says that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili is planning military action to bring the regions under control.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2006