Men missing from border village

Mereti, Georgia : There are seven men missing from this small village, residents said on Tuesday, providing aid workers with the names and ages of those allegedly snatched by militiamen while fleeing the advancing Russian army.

In nearby Karbi, Tengiz Teodorashvili picked through the ruins of his crumbled home, smashed by a Russian shell that wounded his wife while she was cooking dinner.

And a few miles away in Tkiavi, where two-thirds of the buildings are burned black, at least 12 people died during the peak of the fighting, residents said, including one buried by a friend under the soft earth of a garden shed.

"I put him here because I was afraid to dig outside," said Zurab Razmadze, displaying the shallow grave of Koba Jashashvili, 37, who he said was shot to death.

This region near Georgia's northern border has suffered greatly from the conflict ignited 11 days ago.

But a trip here by reporters, who were accompanying the first humanitarian aid convoy to reach outlying areas, also undermined some of the most incendiary allegations advanced by Georgian officials. Mereti, site of the alleged abductions, is the same village where several government officials had recently said three local women were raped and murdered.

At least eight residents said on Tuesday that no such attacks had occurred.

Basic necessities

Georgians living in several of the villages said the Russians occupying their land had treated them well, done nothing to encourage them to leave and offered the only protection available from the South Ossetian militias they feared most. "I am most worried when I don't see Russians around," said Tina Grimradze, 68. Almost totally cut off from the rest of Georgia by Russian checkpoints, residents of the northern villages, many of which are technically part of South Ossetia but have long been administered by Georgia's central government, said they were running low on basic necessities. Some expressed anger at the Georgian officials who led the convoy.

"If you were not prepared for a war, why start one?" Eteri Gvaramashvili, 70, shouted at a member of Georgia's parliament in the village of Ditsi.

- Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service