Emergency.Blog

Looting reignites Russia-Georgia tensions

13 Aug 2008

Looting reignites Russia-Georgia tensions

GORI, Georgia (AFP): Separatist fighters and Russian troops looted and set homes ablaze in Georgia on Wednesday amid mutual recriminations over breaches of a truce that ended five days of bitter conflict.

A day after the truce was brokered by France, Russia faced mounting criticism in the West for its military offensive and US President George W. Bush demanded that Russian troops withdraw from Georgia.

Russian armored vehicles patrolled Gori, the flashpoint Georgian town between the capital and South Ossetia, the breakaway Georgian region at the center of the conflict. Hundreds of South Ossetian rebels with some Russian army personnel went house-to-house in villages near Gori. They torched houses and looted buildings, witnesses said.

The body of a man, his mouth caked with blood, lay in a street in the village of Dzardzanis and nearby the body of a bearded man could be seen crushed under an overturned minivan, an AFP journalist reported. Human Rights Watch said its researchers in South Ossetia had "witnessed terrifying scenes of destruction in four villages that used to be populated exclusively by ethnic Georgians."

Russian tanks have blocked the main highway connecting the rebel region of South Ossetia with the rest of Georgia, the Georgian Foreign Ministry said.

About 100 Georgian special forces, recently returned from Iraq, set up a road block with rocket launchers and other weapons on the main highway from Gori to Tbilisi, about 45 kilometers (30 miles) away.

Russia denied its forces were headed for Tbilisi although Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told CNN television he believed Russia wanted to surround the capital.

Saakashvili expects the United States to take control of his country's ports and airports, a spokesman told AFP on Wednesday. But the Pentagon quickly denied that claim.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev halted the Russian offensive -- ordered in response to Georgia's attack on South Ossetia week -- on Tuesday and French President Nicolas Sarkozy later negotiated a ceasefire with Medvedev and Saakashvili.

Russia accused Georgia of violating the truce by failing to pursue an "active withdrawal" from South Ossetia, where Russia says 2,000 civilians were killed in the fighting.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that Russia would only withdraw from Georgia after Georgian troops had returned to their barracks. On Wednesday, he stepped up the ante against Washington, asking it to choose between a "relatively virtual" relationship with Tbilisi and a "partnership (with Russia) on questions that require collective action."

-- Source/continues: http://tinyurl.com/erri215