Moscow/Tbilisi - Russia military forces ratcheted up the
pressure on their Georgian army opponents with a dramatic failure of
Georgian forces in the Ossetia war's north-western sector.
The sharpest combat on Tuesday was in the Kodori Gorge in
Georgia's north-west, where Abkhazia infantry and armour attacked
Georgian defences, according to a Georgian government report.
Abkhazian ground troops including special forces infantry, and
supported by helicopter gunships, air strikes, and artillery, kicked
off an assault on the remote mountain valley in the morning hours.
The attack had succeeded by midday when the Abkhazian flag was
flying from a former Georgian police headquarters in the largest
village in the valley, Adjara, said Anatoliy Zaitsev, an Abkhazian
military spokesman.
The six-day-old Ossetia war has sparked fighting between Georgia
on two main fronts, in Georgia's separatist province South Ossetia,
and on the border between Georgia and its second separatist province
Abkhazia.
The capture of the Kodori Gorge, taken away from Abkhazia via a
lightning Georgian offensive in 2006, was the second important
territorial defeat for Georgia in as many days.
Russian armoured columns in the central sector, moving south after
having ejected Georgian forces from the Ossetian capital Tskhinvali,
had according to eyewitnesses halted on Monday evening well north of
the Georgian town Gori, but outside the original Ossetian conflict
zone.
Georgian government officials Monday evening claimed Russian
troops had entered Gori and were moving south, a move which would
have directly threatened the Georgian capital, and widened the war
even further.
The Russian air force according to Gori residents carried out some
ten air strikes in the area beginning dawn on Monday, and focusing on
an mostly abandoned tank base outside the town. Russian army
leadership on Tuesday 'in fact no air strikes have taken place in
Gori.'
A Deutsche Presse-Agentur reporter saw the remains of a Georgian
armored personnel carrier on a highway outside Gori that had been
destroyed by air-to-ground rockets. Eyewitnesses said a Russian
aircraft had fired them shortly after dawn.
Russian general staff spokesmen and Gori residents alike
contradicted Georgian reports that Russian troops had entered Gori.
Jet aircraft were overhead, but during the midday hours on Tuesday a
dpa reporter saw no Russian forces, or traces of them, in the town.
The last air bombings in Gori's vicinity were carried out
approximately one hour before Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev
announced the Kremlin had agreed to a ceasefire.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in a late Monday evening
national television statement had warned of an impending Russian
ground offensive, and Russia's intention to occupy all of Georgia.
Saakashvili's remarks and rumours spread about the capital by
mobile phone sparked a run on Tbilisi grocery stores for food and
bottle water, and emptied some city petrol stations of fuel. Waits of
up to four hours to fill an auto's tank were reported.
But as Tuesday dawned the Georgian capital was quiet, having
passed its first night in five days without a Russian airstrike in
the vicinity. Traffic was moving normally, but banks across Georgia
were closed.
Russia's 58th Army, a paratrooper-tank force that captured the
South Ossetian capital Tskhinvali after days of fierce fighting, said
they had no intention of moving on Tbilisi, and added that once the
situation was stable they intended to remove forces from the region,
said Anatoly Nogovystyn, the army commander, according to an Interfax
report.
Russian forces would however 'continue to carry out
reconnaissance,' he added.
The Ossetia war's second front, in the west on the border between
Georgia and its renegade province Abkhazia, was relatively calm on
Tuesday Strong Russian armoured columns on the second western front
held Georgia's Zugdidi district, adjacent to Abkhazia, and were
clearing villages in the region against no resistance, Georgia's
Rustaveli-2 television reported.
The powerful force of some 9,000 naval infantry and 350 tanks and
armoured personnel carriers had by that time not come into contact
with the region's reported defenders: a brigade of US-trained
Georgian infantry with combat experience in Iraq, and flown aboard US
Air Force cargo jets into Tbilisi on Monday.
Russian military casualties since Thursday's outbreak of fighting
was 16 dead and some 100 wounded, a Russian 58th Army spokesman said.
Georgian military casualties as of Monday were some 90 dead and
500 wounded, according to the latest Georgian Army estimates. Russian
army officials on Tuesday for the first time confirmed they had taken
Georgian troops prisoner. No number was given.
Confirmed civilian dead are in excess of 200, and may exceed
2,000, according to unconfirmed reports.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Antonio Guterres,
released 2 million dollars Monday to provide humanitarian support to
people displaced by the fighting.
The UNHCR said the first flight carrying relief supplies was due
to arrive Tuesday from Dubai with a second leaving Copenhagen on
Wednesday. The two flights will carry enough relief supplies for at
least 30,000 people reported to have fled South Ossetia.
The European Union also was moving to assist, authorizing 30 tons
of medical supplies to be sent to Georgia via Armenia.
About 25,000 refugees from South Ossetia's population of 70,000
have fled north and are living in camps and hostels in Vladikavkaz.
Russia has pledged a half-billion dollar effort to rebuild the
region.
Some 2,000 people, among them foreigners, fled Georgia into
Armenia.
USA
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