Georgia alleges that one of two Russian fighter jets which invaded its airspace dropped a 700-kilogram bomb on a Georgian village. However, the bomb did not explode.

"Russian aircraft did not fly over Georgian territory either Monday evening or Tuesday morning," said Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky, a spokesman for the Russian Air Force, quoted by RIA Novosti. "They [the aircraft] did not violate Georgian airspace."

The village where the alleged incident took place is Tsitelubani, about 40 miles west of the capital, Tbilisi. The 1,500 lb bomb landed in a vegetable field.

"It happened yesterday at 1930 local time. Two Su-24 jets flew here. Our radars show that these jets flew from Russia and then flew back in the same direction that they had come from," Georgian Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili told Reuters. "I assess this fact as an act of aggression carried out by planes flown from the territory of another state," he said.

A crater 16ft deep could be seen in pictures taken by photographers. The crater stood at around 35 yards away from a small farmhouse.

"Our radars show that these [Su-24] jets flew from Russia and then flew back in the same direction that they had come from," Merabishvili alleges.

The Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer, introduced in 1974, was the Soviet Union's most advanced all-weather interdiction and attack aircraft at the time and has a shoulder-mounted variable geometry wing.