Militias accused of torching villages

Georgia says Russians are breaking truce

Georgians left Gori, a town near South Ossetia, yesterday. Georgia accused Russia yesterday of sending tanks from South Ossetia into Gori, but Russia issued a swift denial and a witness said the town was empty. (Gleb Garanich/ Reuters)

IGOETI, Georgia - Squeezed into goods trucks, Georgian refugees described yesterday how militia groups looted and burned their villages in an area abandoned by Georgia's army after a war with separatists.

In Tbilisi, the Georgian government accused Russia - which backs the separatists - of breaking a cease-fire by sending soldiers beyond the rebel region to capture Georgian equipment.

The Russians rejected the allegation. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov vowed to tolerate no looting.

For the hundreds of refugees traveling through Igoeti, a village 35 miles from South Ossetia on the main road to Tbilisi, Georgia's accusations were of no consequence.

They had already lost everything.

"All the young men have been killed. The Ossetians are shooting them," Zurab, 45, screamed from the back of a goods truck piled with people.

A young girl in the truck stared blankly into the distance. A woman standing on the roadside wailed.

Zurab said he had escaped from a village near Tskhinvali, focus of the fighting, before South Ossetian militia moved in.

His accusations that South Ossetian militia - not under Russian control - were killing young men could not be independently verified. But US envoy Matthew Bryza said he had received reports of violence in Georgian villages.

"We have credible reports of villages being burned, shootings and killings," Bryza told a news briefing in Tbilisi.

He urged Russia "to make sure they are doing everything possible to restrain irregular forces, South Ossetian or otherwise, from violence against the peaceful population".

Lavrov later vowed to clamp down on any looting in the area.

"I spoke today with [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice and she told me there are reports of acts of looting in Gori, that illegal groups are looting the city and Russian troops are doing nothing," he told reporters.

"I said from the very beginning that if any such facts prove true, we will react in the most serious way. . . . The peaceful population should be protected. We are investigating all these reports and will not allow any such actions.

Russian officials denied Georgian allegations that their troops were in Gori. Russia's General Staff denied other reports that its forces were moving toward the Georgian capital.

But the New York-based Human Rights Watch also issued a statement yesterday detailing pillaging in Georgian villages around the breakaway region.

Human Rights Watch "witnessed terrifying scenes of destruction in four villages that used to be populated exclusively by ethnic Georgians," the organization wrote. "According to the few remaining local residents, South Ossetian militias that were moving along the road looted the Georgian villages and set them on fire."

South Ossetia broke away from Georgia after a long series of clashes after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. Ossetians are ethnically different from Georgians with their own language.

Russia has accused Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili of triggering this week's fighting by trying to recapture South Ossetia. Saakashvili said he was reacting to Russian aggression.