Reuters: Georgia's National Security Council accused Russian troops on Saturday of conducting"ethnic cleansing" in separatist South Ossetia, saying pulling out Georgian forces from the region would lead to more violence.Asked whether Georgia had information that Russian forces were involved in ethnic cleansing, Kakha Lomaia, the National Security Council secretary, told a conference call:
"No doubt about that. Villages that fell under Russian invasion, those villages are being cleaned out. ... Pulling out our troops would lead to more ethnic cleansing by Russian troops."
After that Reuters report came out: Both sides are accusing the other Ergo they both are probably killing innocents to gain tactical advantage.
But Russia invaded Georgia !
I am pretty sure that Georgia started this last round of fighting by shelling and then attacking the provincial capital of S. Ossatia and in the process killing several Russian soldiers who were serving as peacekeepers in the breakaway region. Russia is likely to totally over-react and lose any more high ground that she had. However, she did not initiate this latest fight. Or if she did that information has yet to come out. As to the casualty figures, I was responding to someones claim that the Russian’s had killed 1,500 civilians. This was incorect because even in the article they linked it was clear that 1,500 was the number of civilians that the Russians and S. Ossations said had been killed. I have also read in other articles that the Russians and S. Ossations claimed that these civilians (or actually 1,400 of them) had been killed in the original Georgian assault on the provincial capital. So, to post a link to an article were the Russians claimed that 1,500 civilians had been killed and then to say that this showed that the Russians were killing civilains was not accurate.