GEORGIA:REFUGEES CONTINUED to pour out of South Ossetia yesterday, risking snipers, aerial bombardment and tanks to reach safety across the border.
In the centre of Vladikavkaz, the capital of the neighbouring Russian republic of North Ossetia, refugees crowded on to buses to be dispatched to hotels and sanatoria on the Black Sea coast.
Many had travelled for hours across rocky roads through the mountains to escape the war.
Alisa Mamiyeva (26), a teacher at Tskhinvali's arts lyceum, said: "I came in the boot of a car. Georgian snipers were firing at us from the forest. I heard the bullets hitting the chassis.
"My brother stayed to fight. Our grandparents' home was turned to rubble. We don't know where they are. Nothing is left of their village. It was totally destroyed by rockets and tank fire."
Russia's prime minister Vladimir Putin visited refugees near Vladikavkaz on Saturday, declaring a "humanitarian catastrophe" had taken place. He claimed 22,000 Ossetian refugees had crossed the border into Russia.
Tent camps and a field hospital manned by surgeons and psychologists have been set up close to the border.
Aelita Dzhioyeva, a lawyer who fled South Ossetia on Thursday, said she had managed to call relatives in the city on their mobile phones. "The situation is dire," she said. "People have no water, no electricity, no gas and no food."
- (Guardian service)