By Matt Robinson
GORI, Georgia, Saturday (Reuters) - Russia said it had driven Georgian forces from the capital of South Ossetia today as part of an operation to force Georgia to accept peace in its breakaway region.
Russian warplanes widened the offensive outside the immediate conflict zone to include strikes deep inside Georgia on the second day of fighting that threatens international oil and gas pipelines that bypass Russia.
Russian officials said the death toll now stood at 1,500 and 30,000 refugees from South Ossetia had fled to Russia over the past 36 hours. Russia said two of its warplanes had been shot down and 12 of its soldiers had been killed.
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| A Georgian woman cries next to the body of her son in the town of Gori, 80 km (50 miles) from Tbilisi, August 9, 2008. A Russian warplane dropped a bomb on an apartment block in the Georgian town of Gori on Saturday, killing at least 5 people, a Reuters reporter said. The bomb hit the five-storey building in Gori close to Georgia's embattled breakaway province of South Ossetia when Russian warplanes carried out a raid against military targets around the town. REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili (GEORGIA) |
Russia's military response to the crisis dramatically intensified a long-running stand-off between Russia and the pro-Western Georgian leadership that has sparked alarm in the West and led to angry exchanges at the United Nations reminiscent of the Cold War.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said he would ask parliament to approve the introduction of martial law. Russia accused the West of contributing to the violence by supplying Georgia with arms.
Ukraine, a former Soviet republic whose pro-Western government now aspires to membership of NATO and the European Union, had encouraged Georgia to carry out “ethnic cleansing” in South Ossetia, the Russian foreign ministry said.
Russia said its forces had taken the South Ossetian capital. “Tactical groups have fully liberated Tskhinvali from the Georgian military and have started pushing Georgian units beyond the zone of peacekeepers' responsibility,” Tass quoted Russian Ground Forces commander Vladimir Boldyrev as saying.
“The town is destroyed. There are many casualties, many wounded,” Russian journalist Zaid Tsarnayev told Reuters by telephone from Tskhinvali. “I was in the hospital yesterday where I saw many civilians wounded. The hospital was later destroyed by a Georgian jet. I don't know whether the wounded were still there.”
Russian jets carried out up to five raids on mostly military targets around the Georgian town of Gori, close to the conflict zone in South Ossetia, a Reuters reporter at the scene said. But he saw at least one bomb hit an apartment, killing five people.
In Gori, a woman knelt in the street and screamed over the body of a dead man as the bombed apartment block burnt nearby.
Further down the street a shocked old woman covered in blood stared into the distance and a man knelt by the roadside with his head in his hands.
Russia said the death toll in the two-day conflict had hit 1,500 and was rising, prompting warnings from President Dmitry Medvedev of a humanitarian catastrophe that Moscow was determined to halt by force.
“Our peacekeepeers and reinforcement units are currently running an operation to force the Georgian side to (agree to) peace,” Russian news agencies quoted Medvedev as saying at a meeting with Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.
“They are also responsible for protecting the population. That's what we are doing now,” Medvedev added. Russian troops poured into South Ossetia on Friday, hours after Georgia launched a large-scale offensive aimed at restoring control over the province it lost after a war in the early 1990s.
Russia is the main backer of South Ossetian separatists and the majority of the population, who are ethnically distinct from Georgians, have been given Russian passports.
Tbilisi accuses Russia of launching a war against it. Russia sent fresh reinforcements overnight, which according to Russian news agencies have reached the regional capital Tskhinvali where fierce battles rage. The Russian military said more reinforcements were on their way and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow was not seeking an all-out war with Georgia.
Georgian troops to leave Iraq
KUT, Iraq, Saturday (AFP) - Georgia will withdraw its entire 2,000-strong military contingent from Iraq within the next three days to help battle South Ossetian separatist rebels, a senior Georgian military official said today.
“We are actually in the stage of preparing our departure,” Colonel Bondo Maisuradze, chief of Georgia's military operations in Iraq, told AFP. “We are waiting for the green light from Tbilisi to leave Iraq today or tomorrow.”
The US military has agreed to help with the logistics of the Georgian redeployment, Maisuradze added.
The move came as Georgian and Russian forces were locked in combat over the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia.
The departure of the brigade from Georgia -- the third largest contributor to coalition forces in Iraq after the United States and Britain -- will mean some slight changes, the US military said.
“We'll face structural changes, so we'll have to make changes. Fortunately, they are in a stable area of Iraq,” military spokesman Major John Hall said.
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