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Last update - 23:36 13/08/2008
Moscow denies Georgian claims its troops invaded and looted Gori
By News Agencies
Tags: South Ossetia, Georgia 

In a highly charged atmosphere of claim and counter-claim, Saakashvili said earlier Wednesday that Russian tanks had stormed the Georgian town of Gori and were advancing on the capital, though a deputy minister later backtracked on this.

Moscow said the claims were not true. "No Russian troops or armor are moving towards Tbilisi," Colonel-General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy head of the General Staff, told Reuters.

Witnesses said Russian troops had set up at least two checkpoints several kilometers from Gori and the Russian side later said it had secured an abandoned Georgian ammunition depot outside the town, famous as the birthplace of Josef Stalin.
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Georgian officials said Gori was looted and bombed by the Russians. An AP reporter later saw dozens of tanks and military vehicles leaving Gori, roaring south.

About 50 Russian tanks entered Gori on Wednesday morning, according to a top Georgian official, Alexander Lomaia. The city of 50,000 sits on Georgia's only significant east-west road about 15 miles south of South Ossetia, a separatist province where much of the fighting has taken place.

Russia's deputy chief of General Staff Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn insisted Wednesday that no tanks were in Gori. He said Russians went into the city to try to implement the truce with local Georgian officials but could not find any.

However, AP reporters and television crews saw several dozen Russian military trucks and armored vehicles speeding out of Gori and heading south Wednesday after sighting them around the city. One reporter was told to retreat to the south because Russian shelling would soon begin.

Nogovitsyn also said sporadic clashes continued in South Ossetia where Georgian snipers fired sporadically on Russian troops who returned fire. "We must respond to provocations," he said.

Russia has handed out passports to most in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and stationed peacekeepers in the both regions since the early 1990s. Georgia wants the Russian peacekeepers out, but Medvedev insisted Tuesday they would stay.

Georgian troops pull out of Abkhazia

In the west, Georgian troops acknowledged Wednesday they had completely pulled out of a small section of Abkhazia which they had controlled - a development that leaves the entire area in the hands of the Russian-backed separatists.

"This is Abkhazian land," one separatist told an AP reporter over the Inguri River, saying they were laying claim to historical Abkhazian territory and that Georgian troops left without challenging them.

The fighters had moved across a thin slice of land dotted with Georgian villages.

The border has been along this river for 1,000 years, separatist official Ruslan Kishmaria told AP on Wednesday. He said Georgia would have to accept the new border and taunted the departed Georgian forces by saying they had received American training in running away.

Georgia insisted its troops had been driven out by Russian forces. At first, Russia said that separatists had done the job, not Russian forces. Nogovitsyn said Wednesday that Russian peacekeepers had disarmed Georgian troops in Kodori - the same peacekeepers that Georgia wants withdrawn.

The effect was clear. Abkhazia was out of Georgian hands and it would take more than an EU peace plan to get it back in.

One of two separatist areas trying to leave Georgia for Russia, Abkhazia lies close to the heart of many Russians. Its Black Sea coast was a favorite vacation spot for the Soviet elite, and the province is just down the coast from Sochi, the Russian resort that will host the 2014 Olympics.

Lomaia said Russian troops also still held the western town of Zugdidi near Abkhazia, controlling the region's main highway.

As the Russia military appeared to be carving out a new geographical map, the first United Nations relief flight arrived in Georgia, to help the tens of thousands uprooted by six days of fighting. Thousands of Georgian refugees have streamed into Tbilisi, the capital, or the western Black Sea coast while thousands more South Ossetian refugees headed north to Russia. Those left behind in devastated regions of Georgia cowered in rat-infested cellars or wandered nearly deserted cities.

Saakashvili: Russia is trying to destroy Georgia

At a huge rally Tuesday night, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said Russia's aim all along was not to gain control of the two disputed provinces but to destroy the smaller nation, a former Soviet state and current U.S. ally who wants to join NATO.

Saakashvili, speaking to thousands at a jam-packed square in Tbilisi, said the Russian invasion was not about the two disputed provinces. "They just don't want freedom, and that's why they want to stamp on Georgia and destroy it," he declared Tuesday.

Saakashvili was joined by the leaders of five former Soviet bloc states - Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Ukraine - who also spoke out against Russian domination.

"Our neighbor thinks it can fight us. We are telling it no," said Polish President Lech Kaczynski.

In Brussels, Belgium, France was seeking support from its EU partners to deploy European peacekeeping monitors to the area. But French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the move would only take place with the consent of both Russia and Georgia.

Russia: Georgia has killed more than 2,000 in this war

Russia accused Georgia of killing more than 2,000 people, mostly civilians, in South Ossetia. The claim couldn't be independently confirmed, but witnesses who fled the area over the weekend said hundreds had died.

The overall death toll was expected to rise because large areas of Georgia were still too dangerous for journalists to enter and see the true scope of the damage.

Georgian Health Minister Alexander Kvitashvili said Wednesday that 175 Georgians had died in five days of air and ground attacks that left homes in smoldering ruins. He said many died Tuesday in a Russian bombing raid of Gori just hours before Medvedev declared fighting halted.

An AP reporter also saw heavy damage inflicted to a Georgian village near Gori by a raid Tuesday. Two men and a woman in Ruisi were killed and another five were wounded.

"I always hide in the basement," said 70-year old Vakhtang Chkhekvadze as he pulled off a window frame blasted by an explosion. "But this time the explosion came so abruptly, I don't remember what happened afterward."

In Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian provincial capital now under Russian control, the body of a Georgian soldier lay in the street Tuesday along with debris as separatist fighters launched rockets at a Georgian plane soaring overhead.

Near the city center, pieces of tanks lay near a bomb crater. The turret of one tank was blown into the front of the printing school across the street. A severed foot lay on the sidewalk nearby. Yet several residential areas seemed to have little damage beyond shattered windows.

A poster hanging nearby showed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the words "Say yes to peace and stability". Broken glass and other debris littered the ground.

The Russia-Georgia dispute reached the international courts, with the Georgian security council saying it had sued Russia for alleged ethnic cleansing. For his part, Medvedev reiterated accusations that Georgia had committed genocide in trying to reclaim South Ossetia.

Rice: Russia jeopardizing its international stance

Meanwhile Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Moscow's military operations in Georgia had jeopardized Russia's integration into international institutions.

"There are any number of opportunities for Russia to reverse course and to demonstrate that it is trying to behave according to 21st century principles," she said.

"But I can assure you that Russia's international reputation and what role Russia can play in the international community is very much at stake here," she added.

In its first concrete action of protest, the United States on Tuesday cancelled a Pacific Ocean naval exercise set for next week involving Russia, Britain and France.

"There is no way in good conscience that we could proceed with a joint naval exercise given the state of this crisis," a senior U.S. defense official said on the condition of anonymity as no official announcement had been made.

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