Russia Vows Pullout as Troops Dig In

Other displaced people said that Russian troops had come to their villages and blared a message over loudspeakers: "If there are any Georgians here, come out and we will take you to safety." Russian troops loaded them onto a bus to Gori, where they clustered on child-size beds in a ramshackle kindergarten.

"My family doesn't even know if I am dead or alive," said Manana Galegashvili, 53, an auburn-haired teacher from the South Ossetian village of Achabet. "I was watching my house burn, and a Russian soldier put his gun on me and said, 'Don't look -- just go away.' My dog barked and an Ossetian shot him. So I got on the bus."

After cursing the Russians, whom she blamed for inciting the South Ossetians to violence against them, she said she was glad they moved her to safety relatively unharmed and said they did not mistreat her after she got on the bus.

She said she was furious with Mikheil Saakashvili, the Georgian president, who the Russian government says sparked the conflict by sending troops into the breakaway territory. "He did this on his own," she said. "And who suffers? We do."

With movement severely restricted by the Russian soldiers guarding the main roads into and out of Gori, shortages have developed in recent days.

Increasingly rapacious crowds have greeted aid shipments, such as eight busloads of rice, beans and other staples from the Turkish Red Crescent that arrived Sunday morning under a statue of Joseph Stalin -- the Soviet dictator who is Georgia's most famous son -- in Gori's main square.

As relief workers sought to distribute Sunday's load, throngs of residents shouted and tore at the white sacks through bus windows.

Marina Chalauri, 53, was shoved aside by a middle-aged man. "They are not starving, they are thugs," she said. "Sure, we don't have much, and some are very hungry, but it's not so bad that people should act like this."

Later, with a bent cigarette smoldering toward his lip, Nukri Jokhadze, a doctor, sat in front of this city's military hospital and took stock of six days living under Russian control.

More than 1,200 wounded have passed through the clinic he runs, he said, including a Russian general's aide.

"I am exhausted, but this is my profession. I have no right to be soft," he said. "I never thought I would have to ask Russians whether or not I could enter or leave my city. Now I ask them every day when they will leave, and every day, they go nowhere."

Special correspondent Temo Barzimashvili in Gori contributed to this report.