Women in black headscarves stood by the open coffin, weeping quietly.

A sound system was installed on the balcony of the family home and mourners took turns at the microphone to read harrowing tributes to the young woman who had died.

Many wore badges bearing a picture of her face. Poignantly, a new car was on display on the lawn near the coffin - the one Iveta Toria's family bought as a gift for her forthcoming wedding.

This was the sombre scene at the funeral of one of the victims of the latest upsurge of violence in Abkhazia - the picturesque Black Sea region which has become a flashpoint in an increasingly dangerous dispute between the small former Soviet republic of Georgia and its powerful neighbour, Russia.

In the Soviet era, senior officials abandoned the Kremlin each year to relax on Abkhazia's shores and in its spas. But since the break-up of the USSR, the future of this corner of the Caucasus has been bitterly contested. The former playground of Stalin and his cronies and generations of communist commissars now threatens to become a battleground.

Toria had been discussing marriage plans with her future husband in a cafe in the town of Gali when a bomb went off, killing them and two others.

"The people living here, we're like a family, and all of us feel like we've lost part of our body or spirit," said a local woman sitting in the park nearby. She asked not to be identified. "We are all afraid," she said.

In Gali these days many people fear that speaking out publicly could invite trouble. The atmosphere is tense and fearful. "Since the explosions, people are staying in their houses," said a young man, who also wished to remain anonymous. "Many people feel that there might be war again."

It has been almost 15 years since ethnic Abkhaz militias won a bloody war for independence from Georgia, in which thousands were killed and 250,000 Georgians - around half of Abkhazia's population - fled. But in Gali, the only area where some of the refugees have been allowed to return, it looks as if the fighting has only just ended.

The area used to be known for its tea plantations, tangerine groves and hazelnut crops, but now it is impoverished and desperate. Many houses were bombed into rubble or abandoned to the stray dogs who scavenge amid heaps of decaying rubbish. Russian peacekeeping troops in armoured personnel carriers cruise the potholed roads between fortified checkpoints, watchfully cradling their Kalashnikovs.

"Whenever I come back here, I feel like I'm entering a jungle," the young man said. "I can't believe that it's 2008 and we still have men driving around these streets with weapons."

This month's bomb in Gali came shortly after a series of other small explosions in Sukhumi and Gagra. Georgian officials suggested that feuding Abkhaz mafias probably caused the blasts.