MOSCOW, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- Abkhazia, a breakaway region in Georgia, on Saturday confirmed that a plane crashed in the region this week, one day after Georgia said its forces fired at a Russian plane that had violated the country's airspace.

    Georgia said Friday that it fired at a Russian plane on Wednesday and might have downed it in Georgia-controlled Upper Abkhazia (the upper part of the Kodori Gorge). On Saturday, Georgia said its forces had only fired a warning shot.

    Anatoly Zaitsev, chief of the military general staff of Abkhazia, on Saturday told reporters in the Abkhaz Sukhumi that Abkhaz radar and army posts spotted an aircraft over the Black Seain the vicinity of Abkhazia on Wednesday night.

    "There are no aircraft of this type in the Georgian air force. Most likely, it was an American reconnaissance aircraft," the Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

    However, Sergei Shamba, the foreign minister in the separatist government of Abkhazia, told Russia's RIA Novosti news agency that the plane was probably Georgian.

    On Thursday, Yury Baluyevsky, chief of the Russian General Staff General, said Georgia's accusation is a "hallucination."

    "Russian Air Force planes on Aug. 21 carried out no flights along the Georgian border and there were no violations of Georgian airspace," Russian Air Force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky said Thursday.

    Georgia's claim on Friday escalated tensions with Russia, which had soared earlier in the month when Georgia said a Russian fighter jet had violated its airspace and fired a rocket that did not explode in a Georgian village.

    Relations between Georgia, a former Soviet republic, and Russia have been strained by tensions over South Ossetia and the breakaway region Abkhazia.

    The two regions broke away from Georgia's central government in the early 1990s. Russian peacekeepers have since been deployed there.