Six Georgian soldiers were killed and seven others wounded in a fierce overnight fighting in Georgia's rebel province of South Ossetia, reports reaching here said on Thursday.

Intensive fighting lasted all night outside the ethnic Georgian villages in the breakaway province.

Despite a cease-fire agreement reached on Aug. 13, the fightinghas continued. The Georgian government and the separatists criticized each other for breaking the agreement.

South Ossetia has sought to integrate into the neighboring Russia despite Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili's pledge to reunite the country by taking the region and another breakaway republic, Abkhazia, back under the control of the central government.

The simmering tensions between Tbilisi and South Ossetia erupted in late May when Saakashvili briefly sent troops into the region.

On Tuesday, Saakashvili appealed to world leaders to help convene an international conference to settle the Georgian-Ossetian conflict and deploy Western peacekeepers in the region alongside the Russian troops, whom Georgia accused of siding with the separatist region.

Source: Xinhua