Running for their lives in Georgia

Sarp, Georgia Border: The guns have plenty to say yet.

Western Georgia is the frontline of a conflict that Europe and the US are turning a blind eye to. From Batumi up the Black Sea coast to Poti into Zugdidi and across to Gori, Russian irregulars are in control inflicting, according to refugees, their brutal terms on what is left of the local population.

In Sarp, underneath the rusting hulk of a cement factory, Georgian refugees are trying to salvage something from their shattered lives.

"I need asylum for my family, please help tell your government what is going on" pleads a distraught father who had fled from Zigdadi and spent four days trying to get out.

"Thousands of Chechen fighters are on the road, looting, killing. Who will help us?"

The Turkish red Crescent does what it can, providing water, basic food and some degree of comfort to the traumatised.

Small buses and mini vans ferry terrorised residents to the northern Turkish towns where they are put up in hotels with basic facilities. The better off ones try to go to Ankara or Istanbul. But the numbers are simply to great.

I took a family of three mothers, five children ranging in age from 10 to 17, and two grandmothers to lunch, their first sit-down meal at a table for three days.

Where were the men, I asked, one of the mothers.

"Maybe we will see them later, maybe they are safe in the mountains".

Maybe.

Fraught with danger

The roads of western Georgia are becoming too dangerous for Georgian men to travel. Refugees say that the Russian irregulars are targeting males from early teens upwards.

A Turkish colleague I was travelling with was trying to locate his friend, a Georgian journalist who became separated from our vehicles. His mobile phone was ringing with no answer and then it went dead.

We passed empty villages, came across checkpoints and were turned back.

It was becoming more and more obvious that the Georgian army had been routed and that the battle on the ground was between Russian irregulars and civilians.