MOSCOW: Several people were injured on Wednesday as an explosion tore through a munitions plant in the Moscow-backed breakaway Abkhazia region of Georgia, Russian news agencies reported.

"According to preliminary information, 27 people were admitted to hospital? including 19 Russians on holiday in Abkhazia," the region's health minister Tamaz Tsakhnakia told TASS news agency.

Tsakhnakia said the injuries mainly consisted of light shrapnel wounds and that several people may need to undergo operations.

The separatist province's interior minister Aslan Kobakhia was quoted by Interfax as saying that no one had died in the blast, but that emergency workers were still trying to get to the epicentre.

The blast reportedly tore through a munitions store belonging to the separatist authorities on the shore of the Black Sea.

Abkhazia is internationally recognised as part of the tiny ex-Soviet nation of Georgia but has claimed independence since a conflict in the wake of the collapse of the USSR.

Russia recognised the subtropical region ? along with another province South Ossetia ? as separate countries after a brief 2008 war with Georgia.

Moscow has thousands of troops stationed in the regions in what Georgia calls a military "occupation", and supports the two provinces financially.