Posted on 08/25/2008 8:55:57 AM PDT by neverdem
TBILISI, Georgia -- It was evening, and Manana Rodiashvili had just milked her cow. The disputed region of South Ossetia had seen skirmishes in recent days, but her village was calm.
And then, suddenly, tanks appeared in her street.
"They began shooting all around," said Rodiashvili, 55, an ethnic Georgian. She crouched in her cousin's basement as men speaking Russian entered the house. Then she hid for five days in the countryside.
Like many of the tens of thousands who have fled their villages since the war between Georgia and Russia began more than two weeks ago, Rodiashvili doesn't have a clear sense of whose airplanes she saw, which soldiers came or what date it was. During those chaotic days, people fanned out into the countryside, hiding in orchards and living off plums as they watched their villages burn.
Almost immediately, officials on both sides claimed wild and improbable death tolls. Russian officials accused Georgia's government of committing "genocide," saying 2,000 Ossetians had been killed. Georgian officials spoke of summary executions and announced that "most" ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia had been killed or put in detention camps.
It will probably take weeks to sort out who died and how. Witnesses and nongovernmental organizations say that although widespread looting and some detentions occurred, far fewer civilians died than originally reported. In fact, on both sides it has been hard to find people with firsthand knowledge of deaths in a war that sparked the biggest crisis in Russia's relations with Europe and the United States since the Soviet Union collapsed.
What no one disputes is that villages...
--snip--
In the days before the war began, Ossetians seemed aware that something was about to happen. On Aug. 5 and 6, Ossetian officials sent 36 buses to take women and children to Russia...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
looks like cobra target practice...
But Russian said it targeted only military targets, and entered Georgia only to protect people. Russia has Burger King now, that means they are our friends. Why would Russia lie? /sarcasm
Hmmm...
Russia has created a “Berlin Wall” in re their buffer zone. People cannot return to So Ossetia, and vice versa. Families are separated.
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