AP - Georgia's defense minister said a helicopter in which he was riding came under fire Sunday as it flew over the separatist province of South Ossetia, but it landed safely and nobody was hurt.

Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili spoke hours after South Ossetian officials said their forces shot down a Georgian government helicopter that invaded the breakaway region's airspace. Georgian military officials swiftly denied it was shot down.


Senator John McCain (right)

Georgia's Interior Ministry also said Sunday that in a similar incident last week, a surface-to-air missile was fired at a helicopter escorting a U.S. Senate delegation led by Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona. The aircraft was not damaged and U.S. authorities had been notified, the ministry said.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Joanne Moore said she had no information about the incident.

Speaking to reporters in Gori, a town near South Ossetia, Okruashvili said the Mi-8 helicopter came under large-caliber machine-gun fire from a forested area during a flight to a base in western Georgia.

He said the craft was hit and the pilots struggled to control it and keep it flying for 15 minutes, but were able to land safely with no casualties. He showed reporters a helicopter with several bullet holes in its body.

Earlier, South Ossetian government spokeswoman Irina Gagloyeva said a Georgian Interior Ministry helicopter was downed after its crew failed to respond to requests to land or change their route.

The incident was certain to deepen tensions between the Georgian government and the separatist leadership of South Ossetia, which has close ties to Russia and has run its own affairs since breaking away in a war in the early 1990s.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, a staunch U.S. ally who was elected in January 2004, has vowed to establish control over South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia.

Georgian Interior Ministry representative Shota Khizanishvili initially confirmed that a ministry helicopter had been shot down, but two Georgian military officials soon contradicted his statement.

Okruashvili said the deputy chief of staff of Georgia's armed forces also was on the helicopter, but he did not say how many people were aboard.

The military chief, whose statements have angered South Ossetian leaders and Russian officials in the past, said that he does not recognize any airspace as belonging to the separatist government.

Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli called the incident "one more provocation in a series of many provocations," the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

The Georgian government accuses Russia of supporting the separatists in a bid to prolong its centuries-old domination of Georgia, which is courting the United States and NATO under Saakashvili.

Clashes erupted in 2004 after a military buildup on both sides that followed a Georgian operation to combat smuggling through South Ossetia, which borders Russia. Sixteen people were reported killed.

About 10 people also were wounded last September during shelling of South Ossetia's capital, Tskhinvali, and an armed standoff erupted between a Georgian military unit and Russian peacekeepers in May.