Georgia attacks breakaway capital
Fighting deepens fear of full-blown conflict in region
MEGVREKISI - Georgian troops, backed by warplanes, pounded separatist forces on the outskirts of the South Ossetian capital today, hours after launching an assault on the breakaway region following a short-lived truce.
Georgian artillery shelled Tskhinvali, where government and separatists envoys had been due to meet for Russia-mediated peace talks later today. Many houses were ablaze.
Russia, main backer of the separatists who have controlled the region since a war in the early 1990s, accused Georgia of treachery and urged the world community to avert "massive bloodshed."
The crisis fuelled fears of full-blown war in the region, which is emerging as a vital energy transit route and where Russia and the West are vying for influence.
In New York, members of the UN Security Council were supposed to meet in emergency session at Russia's request to discuss the crisis.
Georgia said the operation, launched after a week of clashes between separatists and the troops in which nearly 20 people were killed, was aimed at ending South Ossetia's effective independence won in a 1991-92 war.
"We are forced to restore constitutional order in the whole region," the commander of Georgian peacekeepers in South Ossetia, Mamuka Kurashvili, told Georgian television.
In Tskhinvali, thousands of people took refuge from the shelling in make-shift shelters in the cellars of their homes. Russian television showed pictures of houses on fire.
"Tskhinvali is surrounded by Georgian forces," Reintegration Minister Temur Iakobashvili said, adding that government forces had taken control of five Ossetian villages loyal to separatists.
A Reuters reporter saw intense fire from heavy weapons at different locations skirting Tskhinvali. The reporter heard heavy fighting coming from the direction of the city.
Separatists vowed to repel the attack without calling for help from Moscow. In a sign of broadening conflict, hundreds of volunteers from Russia and Georgia's other breakaway region of Abkhazia headed to South Ossetia to support the separatist forces, Russian news agencies reported.
The Russian Foreign Ministry appealed for efforts to prevent huge bloodshed.
"It is not too late to avert massive bloodshed and new victims," it said. "Russia will continue efforts to avert the bloodshed and restore peace in South Ossetia."
"We hope our foreign partners will not remain impartial in this difficult moment, when the fate of hundreds of thousands people is decided," it said. "The Georgian leadership should . . . return to civilized ways of solving complicated problems."
Officials from the two sides had been due to hold peace talks at a Russian peacekeeping base but Georgia accused separatists of shelling its villages and launched the large-scale military operation.
Interfax news agency said Georgian forces had launched a tank assault on the southern outskirts of Tskhinvali, which is about 60 miles north of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.
