The War in South Ossetia has escalated as Russian forces are drawn into the conflict on the Ossetian side.
At 10:00 local time, Georgian sources reported that three Russian Su-24 attack aircraft invaded Georgian air space and dropped bombs onto a target near the town of Kareli - a later flight dropping one bomb near Gori. While noone was harmed in the second attack, apparently seven people were injured by the first bombing. According to the AFP, a speaker of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs disclaims this information as "nonsense" and "rubbish".
At 11:38 the president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili announced the mobilization of reserve troops to withstand what he called "a large-scale military aggression" by Russia and called Russia to stop the "bombardment of Georgian towns".
Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of Russia said that "it is regrettable that on the day before the opening of the Olympic Games, the Georgian authorities have undertaken aggressive actions in South Ossetia."
The crisis broke out after days of heavy fighting in the region. On August 7 Georgian troops launched an offensive against the Ossetian town of Tskhinvali, the separatist's capital.
The Georgian government claims that this is in reaction to attacks by "separatist rebels" on "unarmed civilians and peacekeeping forces" in villages near the town.
At the same time, the state news agency of South Ossetia reports that that Tskhinval is under heavy artillery fire, with most or all of its population seeking shelter, and apparently a number of buildings already having been destroyed.
Reported by WIKINEWS
Source
# Official: Warplane Drops Bomb Outside Gori". Civil Georgia, August 8, 2008
# "Georgia surrounds capital in rebel province". AFP, August 8, 2008
# Press center of the Chancellery of the Government of Georgia "Statement of the Government of Georgia regarding the situation in the South Ossetia region of Georgia". Government of Georgia, August 8, 2008
# "Tskhinval is under the most frightful fire". State news agency of the Republic of South Ossetia (according to en.wikipedia), August 8, 2008
# Press Office of the President of Georgia "Declaration of Universal Mobilization by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili". President of Georgia, August 8, 2008
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Comments
#1 Shame on Georgia!
Shame on Georgia! Attacking its own people, killing civilians and destroying villages. This is called ethnic cleansing. Shakashvilli should be put to Hague tribunal.. Hopefully, Russians will destroy that bustard. Americans, as always bet on the wrong horse by training and supplying weapons to Georgians! Freedom and democracy at its best!
#2 Mission of Russia – to rescue the world!!!
Mission of Russia – to rescue the world!
Russia - the great country. She struggles for world peace.
The aggression information on Georgia is provocation Georgian and the American mass media.
Recollect history of war with Germans in 1941-1945.
Then thanks to Russia all world remained live.
Thanks to Russia each of you was born on light!
Russia will necessarily achieve world peace!
It is not pleasant to the large American corporations stealing resources at other countries.
America arrives as cockroaches. She eats resources of other countries. For America people do not represent value.
It the colonial interests worry only!
People of the Earth! People of the World! Please, come round!
Prove, that each of you struggles for the world!
Cease to humiliate the near!
The human life is sacred!
Russian
http://www.interfax.ru/txt.asp?id=25962&sec=1484
#3 God bless Russia for intervening in a genocide
On Friday morning, Georgia used cluster munitions against the residents of Tshinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, killing 1400 of its residents, a huge tall for Georgia's tiny Ossetian minority. This is a war crime. Not an isolated act of ethnic cleansing that Stalin, Beria and other Georgian despots before Saakashvili have practiced, but a continuation of genocide. The spectre of genocide should not be allowed to rise over Transcaucausia again! God bless Russia for intervening to save the Ossetian people from the murderous regime of mad dog Mikheil Saakashvili. Yes, he talks beautifully, and yes, he is "our son of a bitch," but do we really want to let him exterminate the Georgia's tiny Abkhaz and Ossetian ethnic minorities (90k + 70k in total) just to stick the Russians in the eye??? And don't forget, Ossetians are Christians!