A surprise military offensive by Georgia, a staunch U.S. ally, to retake the breakaway province of South Ossetia reportedly killed hundreds of people Friday, triggering a ferocious counterattack from Russia that threatened to plunge the region into full-scale war.
Moscow, which has close ties to South Ossetia, sent a column of tanks rolling into South Ossetia and reportedly attacked two Georgian air bases as it moved to assert itself as the dominant regional power.
As night fell, there were wildly conflicting claims as to who held the battlefield advantage.
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili said “Georgian military forces completely control all the territory of South Ossetia” except for a northern section adjacent to Russia. But Russian news agencies cited a Russian military official as saying heavy fighting was under way on the outskirts of the regional capital.
Witnesses said the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, was devastated.
“We lost our city … The Georgians are like Nazis, they are killing civilians, women and children with heavy artillery and rockets,” said 28-year-old Sarmat Laliyev, a Tskhinvali resident who had fled to Dzhava, a village near the border with Russia.
The fighting broke out as much of the world’s attention was focused on the start of the Olympic Games and many leaders, including Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Bush, were in Beijing.
The timing suggests Saakashvili may have been counting on surprise to fulfill his longtime pledge to wrest back control of South Ossetia _ a key to his hold on power.
Saakashvili agreed the timing was not coincidental, but accused Russia of being the aggressor. “Most decision makers have gone for the holidays,” he said in an interview with CNN. “Brilliant moment to attack a small country.”
Diplomats issued a flurry of statements calling on both sides to halt the fighting, but with no immediate effect. It was unclear what might persuade either side to stop shooting. Both claim the battle started after the other side violated a cease-fire that had been declared just hours earlier after a week of sporadic clashes.
The United States was sending its top Caucasus envoy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza, to the region to try to end the bloodshed.
Russia, which has granted citizenship to most of the region’s residents, appeared to lay much of the responsibility for ending the fighting on Washington.
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