The ministry said earlier in the day that a column of vehicles with some 100 troops had been dispatched to the Kodori Gorge to continue an operation launched Tuesday night to detain Emzar Kvitsiani, a former presidential envoy to the gorge, and his supporters after they refused to recognize the Tbilisi authorities.
The Rustavi-2 television channel said the police had surrounded Kvitsiani and up to 150 members of his militia near a village and nearby forests. About 80 former members of the Hunter battalion, which was officially disbanded in 2005, laid down their arms after receiving security guarantees from the authorities, the channel said.
A senior source in the Georgian government, who preferred to remain anonymous, earlier denied statements that the operation in the gorge was military.
"Constitutional order is being restored there through a standard special operation," he said. "Such operations are carried out all over the world against criminal elements, when a criminal threatens a country's constitutional order."
He said the operation would end either later Wednesday or Thursday and confirmed that three servicemen had been wounded.
