Word: ossetians
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...after the cease-fire was agreed, the Russian army was still destroying military and civilian targets; the Georgian government accused it of inexplicably setting fire to vast tracts of woodland. In South Ossetia, the looting and deliberate destruction of ethnic Georgian villages mean that the two populations - Georgian and Ossetian - will not any time soon live side by side, as they had for centuries...
...again. Over the last three days, a majority of the remaining houses in the villages of Kekhvi, Nizhnie Achaveti, Verkhnie Achaveti and Tamarasheni, have been burned while new fires were started in the smaller surrounding Georgian villages off the main road. On Tuesday a backhoe was used by South Ossetian villagers to tear down courtyard walls and rip into the sides of houses. Men wearing camouflage outfits and white Nikes, along with some in civilian clothes, stood around on the main road as the backhoe took a swipe at an above ground gas or water pipe...
...come back," said Iosif Zadashvili, a resident of Kurta, which lies off the main road. The white-haired man sat dazed in the Georgian town of Gori on a chair made for a child, his lower lip trembling, as he related how Russian soldiers had stood by while Ossetian irregulars beat him in the courtyard of his home, knocking out all of his lower front teeth...
...officials from the Russian Ministry of Emergency Services cleared the Georgian villages of old men and women who had stayed behind to protect property and livestock. They were brought to the Georgian city of Gori, which is still controlled by the Russian army. The grandmothers and grandfathers told of Ossetian irregulars from both north and south of the Russian border coming into their villages and threatening to kill them...
...Georgia's decision to step up attacks two weeks ago on Ossetian positions in Tskhinvali - a decision that, some observers say, gave the Russians a pretext to invade - he responds: "There was no choice. The choice was either resist or don't resist and watch Russia overrun our country and come all the way to the capital." Russia's ambitions, he explains later, are not restricted to South Ossetia. "They came for all of Georgia," he says. "They saw that we are prospering here and they wanted to put an end to that." And, of course, there was the international...