Transnistrian border guards denied on Tuesday evening OSCE Mission to Moldova representatives to enter the Transnistrian territory. On Tuesday afternoon, the OSCE officials who brought food and water to children in the Tighina orphanage clashed with Transnistrian policemen who blocked the road leading to the boarding school, BASA has learned from Colonel Jan Nadolski, military observer on behalf of the OSCE Mission in Tiraspol.

According to Nadolski, the OSCE representatives broke on Tuesday afternoon through the Transnistrian police cordon which blocked a road to orphanage with cars on a distance of half a kilometre. "The OSCE vehicle transporting water and food to children in the school managed to go around the cordon of Transnistrian police cars, arriving to the gates of the orphanage. The militiamen tried to stop the OSCE car but Moldovan police officers assisted this maneuvre and prevented the Transnistrian police from stopping the OSCE representatives. Transnistrian policemen tried to stop again the OSCE representatives in the courtyard, but the children assaulted the policemen. The OSCE representatives left the orphanage after leaving the water and food to children," Nadolski noted.

Transnistrian border guards banned on Tuesday evening the OSCE representatives to enter the region, invoking a provisional ban imposed from Tiraspol until the problem around the orphanage in Tighina is settled, the OSCE Mission observer stressed. The peacekeeping forces of Moldova transmitted the water and food products of the OSCE representatives to children from boarding school, while the representatives of the OSCE Mission in Tighina are on a visit to Chisinau," he specified.

The Joint Control Commission will discuss the Tuesday incident on Thursday, Nadolski added.

Contacted by BASA, Maria Ungureanu, director of the Tighina-based orphanage, said that the breakfast of children was made in school, "but we do not know yet what they will eat at supper and lunch, and we hope that the peacekeeping forces will help us again." "We have some food for a period. We bring drinking water from neighbours, and the children bring technical water with pails from a tank transported by the OSCE, which the Transnistrian police blocked at half a kilometre from school. The Transnistrian police still block the doors of rooms in school and the road leading to orphanage," Ungureanu stated.

According to a communique released by the press service of the Moldovan Foreign Ministry, the ministry describes the Tuesday afternoon actions of the Transnistrian police as a gross violation of international laws and of the status of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, a defiant negligence of the internationally recognised human norms.

"This action shows one more time the true face of the separatist regime in Tiraspol, its irresponsibility and refusal to settle the problem of Moldovan Latin-spelling schools on a civilized way," reads the communique. The Foreign Ministry called on the OSCE-member states "to adequately describe the criminal actions of the Tiraspol authorities and invites the international community to show a prompt reaction, to oppose such inhuman and illegal actions."