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Food aid reaches South Ossetia capital

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili meets refugees in Tbilisi, Georgia, on Saturday. Both sides to the Russia-Georgia conflicts signed a six-point EU-mediated plan with Russian President Dimitry Medvedev on Saturday, the Kremlin announced. PHOTO: EPA

Food aid began to be handed out in parts of the war-ravaged capital of separatist South Ossetia on Saturday, as buses filled with people who fled the conflict began returning to Tskhinvali.

Old men gathered to chat on benches in city squares still strewn with shattered glass and rubble from the war. A few shops tentatively opened their doors, still afraid of the armed looters who have prowled the city for days.

Two trucks from Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry were seen giving out potatoes, onions and tinned meat in the center as aid helicopters flew in. Locals who had not received food since last Thursday crowded around.

But many of the around 16,000 city residents who stayed through the fierce fighting between Russian forces and South Ossetian separatists on one side and Georgian forces on the other, complained they were still not getting enough.

“The situation is terrible. Please help me,” said Natella Undadze, 73, as she lined up with several other women for charity assistance outside an Orthodox church that was partly damaged by shelling.

“I hope they have candles. It’s so dark at home. We have no water, no electricity, no gas. It’s a complete blockade. We were promised humanitarian aid yesterday, but nothing came. They said they would come today,” she said.

Apart from the food aid trucks, there were other tentative signs of normal life resuming in the city. A few shops opened their doors, if only for a few hours and on special requests for fear of the looters who continue to roam.

“They all want things for free. It was our own people who looted and burned down the supermarket,” said Venera Gakuyeva, 27, as Russian tanks rolled past her food shop in the city center, which opened five years ago.

At a tent camp set up in the city, Russia’s Deputy Emergency Situations Minister Pavel Platt said that the Russian humanitarian aid assistance effort was now at full force after some earlier organizational problems.

“We have brought in around 1,000 tonnes of food aid. We’re also rebuilding water pipes, gas pipelines, electricity networks and transport connections,” Platt said after a meeting with local and Russian government officials

A warehouse nearby was filled with pasta, pickled gherkins, buckwheat, sugar and water bottles. Dozens of ethnic-Georgians taken hostage by South Ossetian separatists at the start of the conflict swept the streets outside.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Russian tanks, howitzers, anti-aircraft batteries and troop transport carriers continued to flood into South Ossetia. Soldiers estimated that Russia had 30,000 men in the separatist province.

The ethnic-Georgian villages in South Ossetia that were looted by Russian soldiers and South Ossetian militias remained deserted. Most of the houses were gutted and charred. A sign on one of the homes read: “Tbilisi next!”

“I was in a Georgian village on the way to Gori. I had four Georgians on their knees and I was ready to shoot them. Thank God that he saved me from sin,” a drunken South Ossetian militiaman said.
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