Russian tanks, troops patrol deserted South Ossetian capital

Russian tanks and troops patrolled the deserted streets of South Ossetia's devastated capital yesterday as the city began to bury its dead after five days of fighting with Georgia.

Black-clad mourners gathered around an open coffin on a hill outside Tskhinvali as a military convoy carrying water, food and weapons rumbled past on the main road into the city which a few days ago was home to 35,000 people. Most have fled.

"It looks like a small Stalingrad, doesn't it?" said resident Teimuraz Pliyev, 62, after emerging from a basement where he and his family sheltered for three days.

"Barbarians! Look: this is Georgian democracy. If it weren't for Russia, we would already have been buried here."

At the junction of Moscow Street and Peacekeepers' Street, two Georgian T-72 tanks lay mangled, their wheels scattered yards away.

Tskhinvali has borne the brunt of the conflict in South Ossetia, which lies within Georgia but broke from Tbilisi's rule in a war in 1991-92 and declared independence, albeit without international recognition.

The Russian military says 1,600 people have been killed in fighting with Georgia since late Thursday, when Tbilisi sent in forces to try to retake the rebel province.

Most of South Ossetia's population are ethnically distinct from Georgians and many hold Russian passports. They use the rouble as their currency. Moscow has provided financial and political support, although it has not recognised them as an independent state.

The Russian army escorted a small group of foreign reporters around Tskhinvali in armoured personnel carriers yesterday, controlling their movements and selecting places to stop.

An army colonel, who declined to be identified, said fighting in the city had practically ended.

"There's still some occasional sniper fire, but we are finishing them off steadily and surely," he told Reuters.

The volume of military traffic moving into the city had slowed, a Reuters correspondent said.

Refugees, mainly the elderly, have fled north in private cars across the border into the Russian region of North Ossetia, which has close ties with its namesake region on the southern side of the Caucasus mountains.

Many of those who died were buried hastily in their backyards, Mr Pliyev told reporters, as their bodies had started to decompose in the heat.

More than 200 wounded in the fighting were treated in the Republic Hospital. Now abandoned, its basement wards were strewn with bloodstained bandages and smell strongly of human waste.