Spiralling confrontation in Georgia saw several people injured Thursday in clashes between the police and the opposition, rallying since April 9 in a bid to force the president to resign, AFP reported.
Georgia's interior ministry said protesters on Thursday evening attacked and badly beat up police officers near an opposition rally outside the parliament.
"Anti-government protesters on Thursday attacked policemen. Three officers were injured as a result, one of them seriously," Interior Ministry spokesman, Shota Utiashvili, told AFP.
The opposition spokeswoman dismissed the accusation and said police were preparing a violent crackdown on peaceful protesters.
"At least seven protesters were beaten by the police, they were hospitalised with broken heads and legs," spokeswoman of the opposition Georgia's Way party, Sophio Jajanashvili, told AFP.
The Georgian opposition has been staging daily protests during the last six weeks in the biggest demonstrations against President Mikheil Saakashvili's rule since Georgia fought a brief war with Russia last August.
Opposition protests with pickets outside public buildings and blocked traffic at the main thoroughfares in Tbilisi disrupted daily life and governmental operations.
On Tuesday opposition briefly blocked Tbilisi rail station paralysing traffic at the strategic railway artery between the energy-rich Caspian region and the West.
But the authorities did not intervene with protests as they have been keen to avoid a repeat of events in November 2007, when riot police forcefully dispersed thousands of anti-government protesters, damaging Saakashvili's reputation and giving a boost to opposition forces.
Opponents accuse Saakashvili of mishandling the conflict with Russia and of becoming increasingly autocratic since he came to power after the peaceful 2003 Rose Revolution.
Saakashvili has rejected the resignation calls, instead offering talks on democratic reforms, and has hinted that Russia is financing the campaign against him.
He shrugged off the protests as "no surprise" and suggested that demonstrators were recruited by the opposition from the ranks of bureaucrats who lost their jobs due to reforms.
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