Georgians uprooted in South Ossetia

But Kokoity also said any ethnic Georgian civilians who sided with Georgian military forces will not be allowed to return. "We warned them in advance," he said.

David Sanakoyev, a South Ossetian government official, said a total of 182 Georgian civilians were detained for their own protection and that they were eventually bused to the Georgian side. The last group of 85 men was escorted to Georgia on Wednesday, he said.

Georgian officials charge there was a coordinated campaign against ethnic Georgian civilians in Ossetian- and Russian-controlled areas.

'It was concerted action'
"It was a concerted action of Russian official military forces together with paramilitaries," Eka Tkeshelashvili, a senior Georgian government official, said at a meeting in Europe in Vienna this week.

Over the past three weeks, AP reporters have witnessed burning homes in more than half a dozen Georgian villages. On Aug. 11, an AP reporter saw looting by armed men in Georgian villages north of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali — as Russian troops stood by.

Another AP reporter saw burning and looting of Georgian homes in at least six separate areas from Aug. 22 through Thursday: the villages of Achabetiug, Kekhvi, Tamarasheni, Ksuisi and Eregvi, as well as near the capital Tskhinvali.

With most Georgians gone, there seems to be an effort to erase even the memory of their presence here. On Thursday, a South Ossetian policeman knocked down a sign with the name of the Georgian village of Tamasheni, written in both Georgian and Latin scripts, as bulldozers razed the last remaining houses. At least three more Georgian villages have been bulldozed in South Ossetia, witnesses said.

Human Rights Watch said Ossetian militias have been involved in systematic persecution of ethnic Georgian civilians.

"They aim at pushing Georgians out of their villages, to make sure they have no place to return to," researcher Tatyana Lokshina said.

Rights worker: Satellite images confirm attacks
Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said satellite images confirm militia attacks on ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia and "emphasize the need for Russian authorities to hold these militias accountable."

A Human Rights Watch team visited five Georgian villages in South Ossetia from Aug. 12-17, she said, taking photographs and interviewing victims. The team witnessed looting and burning in two of the villages, Tamareshni and Kekhvi.

Until the last years of the Soviet Union, Georgians and Ossetians had lived peacefully. But as reforms weakened Moscow's grip, Ossetians and Georgians formed nationalist movements, each staking a claim to their shared homeland.

After Ossetia declared its independence, Georgian forces invaded, launching a full-scale war that ended in 1992 in a Kremlin-brokered deal that divided the region. South Ossetia fell within Georgia's borders, but operated with wide autonomy. North Ossetia came under Moscow's control.

The uneasy peace that followed was marked by sporadic clashes, which intensified when Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili came to power four years ago, vowing to assert Tbilisi's authority over Georgia's separatist regions. This only stoked animosity among South Ossetians, who believe Georgia has no right to rule them.

On Aug. 7, Georgian forces launched a devastating rocket and artillery assault on South Ossetia's capital of Tskhinvali. Russia mounted a massive military response, sending hundreds of armored vehicles south across Georgia's border and driving the Georgians deep into their own territory.

The Russians have accused the Georgians of attempting genocide, saying the barrage targeted Tshkinvali's hospital and residential neighborhoods. They say its tanks rolled over people alive, and fired into basements where Ossetian families cowered.

South Ossetian officials and the Russian military say they have done their best to discourage looting and arson and to protect Georgian residents of the breakaway republic, despite the popular anger at what they say was Georgia's effort to destroy them as a people.

'We are not barbarians'
"We are not barbarians," Kokoity said this week.

South Ossetian officials say 1,692 civilians were killed and some 1,500 wounded in Georgia's military assault — which devastated some Tskhinvali neighborhoods. At first Russia said about 2,000 Ossetian civilians had been killed. But on Aug. 20, it reduced that figure to 133 confirmed dead.

"The truth is no one knows," Thomas Hammarberg, the Council of Europe's human rights commissioner, told reporters in Moscow Thursday.

In Soviet times, Ksuisi residents say, Ossetians and Georgians lived harmoniously in the prosperous village surrounded by corn fields, grapevines and orchids with peaches and apples.

Now the some 400 homes in the hamlet's Georgian quarter appear to have been burned and looted. Of about 700 Ossetian houses, a small number — including a school — bore the marks of damage from Georgian artillery fire.

Many Ossetians say their ethnic Georgian neighbors bear collective guilt for Tbilisi's assault.

The mother of Guzitayev's friend, Lenya Doguzov, clutched the earth and wailed in an orchard that had been her son's grave site before his body was moved to a cemetery.

"Georgians should lie next to my son," Yekaterina Doguzova, 70, said bitterly as she grieved alongside her daughter-in-law Zemfira Doguzova, 34.

Pavel Panikaev, 73, angrily recalled how Georgians beat him with rifle butts. "We have a right for revenge," he said. "We will not leave Georgian houses, orchards, nothing. We will erase them from the face of earth."

Lena Kudakhova, 67, of Ksuisi was married to a Georgian man killed in the recent fighting. Now her half-Georgian daughter is in hiding nearby, fearing retaliation, and her half-Georgian son has fled to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi.

She wonders what will happen to her. "Nobody needs me in an independent Ossetia," she said.

Associated Press writers Mansur Mirovalev and Maria Danilova in Moscow, and Jim Heintz and Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili in Tbilisi, Georgia, contributed to this report.

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