Authorities in Georgia's breakaway province of Abkhazia say its former interior minister has killed himself after being accused of masterminding an assassination attempt on the area's president.

Abkhazia's General Prosecutor's office said in a statement that Almasbei Kchach shot himself Tuesday after security officers tried to detain him at his apartment in the separatist capital, Sukhumi.

The office said Kchach organized an explosion and a grenade shooting that nearly killed Abkhazia President Alexander Ankvab in February and took the lives of his two bodyguards.

Abkhazia broke away from Georgia in a war in the early 1990s. Russia recognized Abkhazia and another separatist province, South Ossetia, as independent states after the August 2008 Russian-Georgian war.

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