An Uncertain Death Toll In Georgia-Russia War

Manana Rodiashvili, 55, a Georgian from South Ossetia, fled her village and spent five nights hiding in an orchard. (By Tara Bahrampour -- The Washington Post)
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Rita Bestaeva, an Ossetian, said she and several others were captured by Georgian soldiers Aug. 8 and held overnight on the Georgian side of the border. They were not physically abused, she said, and were released by a Georgian special forces member who sneaked them out and took them back to the edge of South Ossetia in his jeep. "What he did was brave and kind," she said, "but after what I have seen, I still think the Georgian army is shameful."

Nor did Georgian residents in South Ossetia report serious misbehavior by Russian soldiers.

The worst violence was committed by the "irregulars" -- South Ossetian militiamen and others who joined the Russians as they came in.

South Ossetia has a small official army of 2,500 to 3,000, but most young men consider themselves warriors, according to Neistat.

"Essentially, every male is a militia member," she said. "The majority of the young male population has fatigues and automatic weapons under their beds. So essentially these men, as soon as the shelling started, fled to the woods" and became soldiers. It was an instant army of 15,000 to 16,000 Ossetians, she said, under no one's command.

According to witnesses, the Ossetian militias began widespread looting. "They ask for access to the house, and if there's any protestations, they shoot them at the door," said Marcus Bleasdale, a freelance photographer who has traveled to villages in recent days, adding that he had seen several bodies in doorways.

In the Georgian town of Tkviavi, residents said 12 people were killed, several of them shot in their homes by roving Ossetian militias. Residents pointed to the fresh grave of Shamili Okropiridze, 60, who they said was shot in his front yard from a passing car, likely driven by an Ossetian militiaman.

In Eredwi, another Georgian village, Spiridon Mamisashvili, 62, said he hid in his garden as militiamen shot seven of his neighbors. "In one family, they shot the wife and the husband," he said, standing in the doorway of a refugee center in Tbilisi. "In another family, only the wife."

Mamisashvili trudged through the countryside all that night, joining others fleeing toward Gori. But that city, too, was gripped by terror. The Russian bombardment had begun several days earlier, destroying several apartment blocks and other buildings.

According to Georgian officials, as many as 90 percent of Gori's residents fled in the early days of the attack. Nukri Jokhadze, who heads Gori's main hospital, said that in the first five days, 27 civilians were killed and about 1,200 wounded, mostly from cluster bombs.

A doctor standing in the hospital's front yard at 2 a.m. on Aug. 12 was killed by a blast from a helicopter. "I don't know how they attacked this building," Jokhadze said. "It has a giant red cross on the roof."

Many of the wounded were transferred to Tbilisi, where hospitals have reported 70 civilian deaths. Gori hospitals have reported 64 deaths, and in South Ossetia, the Tskhinvali hospital has reported 44. Still uncounted are the bodies buried in gardens or lying where they fell.