As Transnistrian authorities hinder OSCE officials to pass food supplies and water to children locked up in the Latin-spelling orphanage in Tighina (Bender), this mission was assumed by Moldovan police officers, BASA learned from the chief of the Moldovan police unit in this city, Valeriu Prudnicov.

He said the Transnistrian militiamen (police) still deny the access to the school and surrounding area, but allowed a team of Moldovan policemen to bring food supplies and water to the doorway of this institution.

Contacted by BASA, Colonel Jan Nadolski, military observer of the OSCE Mission to Moldova, said the Transnistrians prevented on Wednesday OSCE representatives from entering the region. The Transnistria travel ban for OSCE staff will be subject of discussion in the Thursday meeting of the Joint Control Commission.

The director of the orphanage, Maria Ungureanu, confirmed for BASA that the Transnistrian militia maintained the control on the gateways of the school. "The tank with water, which OSCE staff had brought earlier, is half a kilometres of the school, and the children have to carry water alone, in buckets. The Moldovan police have succeeded in bringing them food on Wednesday. Yet we don't know what to expect the next days. Our teachers are trying hard to make the children feel relatively comfortable, they hold contests and games to entertain the children," stated Ungureanu.

According to Claus Neukirch, spokesman for the OSCE Mission to Moldova, the Mission was informed that no OSCE staff will be permitted to enter the region pending an investigation of an alleged incident on Tuesday in which the Transnistrian authorities claim a militiaman was injured by an OSCE vehicle.

Local militia in Tighina seized the orphanage on July 26 but the children forced their way back in and have since remained in the building, with food and water supplies being delivered by the OSCE Mission.

On August 17 two OSCE Mission members in a vehicle were denied entry to the Transnistrian region at the main road checkpoint in Tighina. The evening meal which they were ferrying to the school was transferred to a vehicle of Moldovan peacekeepers. This too was initially refused admission but it later managed to deliver the food to within several hundred metres of the school.

In the past weeks authorities in the region have taken measures to forcibly close schools which teach in the Latin script.