By Margarita Antidze

ERGNETI, Georgia, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Georgian villagers described on Thursday how their homes had come under heavy fire for the first time in years as tensions in breakaway parts of the country escalate.

"I do not remember anything like this for a very, very long time. I had a feeling the Ossetians were shooting directly at our houses. We were very scared," Zauri Doijashvilli, 76, said in a government-controlled part of separatist South Ossetia.

His village, Ergneti, was calm in daylight, but his house had been badly damaged and many others had been hit by bullets or shrapnel in apparent mortar fire from the separatist-controlled area late on Wednesday.

South Ossetia split from Georgia soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and a joint Georgian-Russian peacekeeping force polices a shaky truce in the region.

Bouts of violence are not unusual but people in Ergneti, a village of about 300, said this time they felt their houses were being directly targeted.

"It was a horrible night. I was thinking that the awful shooting would never stop. My neighbour's children were crying they were so scared," said Nona Toroshelidze, aged 53, whose neighbour and her young children had sheltered in her cellar.

Separatist officials said up to four people were injured in their nearby capital Tskhinvali and shelling had damaged southern parts of the town.

In Ergneti, Doijashvilli also said he spent the night in a cellar, with his wife, two sons and their families.

"They started shooting first, and then our guys responded with fire and the shooting lasted more than an hour," he said.

Separatists say the Georgians started the clash by shooting at Tskhinvali, forcing them to return fire.

Monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe were investigating who opened fire first.

The commander of the Georgian peacekeeping battalion in South Ossetia, Mamuka Kurashvili, said there were no victims in central, government-controlled villages of which Ergneti is one.

Georgia, whose pro-Western leadership wants to regain control of South Ossetia and the breakaway province of Abkhazia, accuses Russian peacekeepers of supporting the separatists and wants them replaced by an international force.

Georgia and Russia clashed at the United Nations on Wednesday over an incident in which Georgian security forces killed two Russian officers training insurgents in Abkhazia. Each accused the other of aggravating tensions.

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