Fighters loot as houses burn

2008-08-13 21:04

Dzardzanis - Scores of houses were ablaze on Wednesday outside the Georgian city of Gori as local fighters and Russian soldiers looted homes in Georgian villages, an AFP reporter witnessed.

The body of a man, apparently a civilian, his mouth caked with blood, lay sprawled in a street near a petrol station in this village while nearby another body of a bearded man could be seen crushed under an overturned, burned mini-van.

Hundreds of fighters, primarily local Ossetian rebels but with some Russian army personnel mingled amongst them, went house to house in villages on the road toward the Georgian city of Gori, removing TV sets and other belongings.

Civilian cars, many packed with fighters holding rifles that protruded from the windows, travelled along the road heading south from South Ossetia towards Gori, while only a few vehicles were on the road heading north.

An AFP journalist who accompanied local fighters south from the rebel province to within a few kilometres of Gori in Georgia proper said the atmosphere was simultaneously carnivalesque and very tense.

Fruit tree orchards alongside the abandoned burning homes in villages like Ergneti and Borgneti had been torched, with flames licking up the sides of houses and thick black smoke rising high into the air from many of them.

Irregular fighters and some Russian servicemen could be seen along the road entering shops and bars and emerging carrying looted boxes of cigarettes and bottles of beer and cognac.

Russian troops in an armoured personnel carrier (APC) on the road toward Gori told AFP that there had been shooting in the area throughout the night and warned that snipers were active ahead.

- AFP