Russian warplanes turn Gori to rubble

The central square of Gori is dominated by a gigantic statue of Joseph Stalin, the Georgian town's favourite son.

On Tuesday, as though out of some black comedy, the iron statue was untouched, presiding with raised arm over a town square littered with the debris of war.

Across the square, lay the crater of a bomb that killed one Dutch cameraman and injured another. Shopfronts were piled with glass and twisted iron, while cars sagged on punctured tyres.

An apartment building behind the square was still smoking, its facade blackened and reeking. A man crying on a bench nearby said it had been hit half an hour before by a bomb from a Russian jet.

Overhead, the roar of Russian warplanes caused panic-stricken glances as the man said: "You need to get out of here, it's a dangerous area".

The rationale for bombing the square will probably remain a mystery, happening, as it did, just hours before Dmitry Medvedev, Russian president, declared a ceasefire.

From dawn, jets seemingly hit almost anything they could in this unfortunate town, 20km behind the front lines. Timur Goldelashvili, one of the last residents to leave, said he had counted 10 airstrikes on the town and its environs. The raids could have had no military purpose. The town centre lies more than 3km from the nearby army base, which had been hit by airstrikes on Saturday and Sunday.

With a nearby castle perched on a hill, the town has a fairy-tale charm for tourists. But four days of bombing, along with the threat of Russian assault, have left it deserted, littered with tree branches, glass and dislodged bricks. The only residents that remained were those who could not get rides back to Tbilisi.

"They bomb from a very high altitude. Sometimes you don't even hear the plane or see it," said Mr Goldelashvili. "I'm a military man. I was in the Soviet army. I still don't understand this, why they would bomb us civilians. For what purpose?"

Whether the new bombing campaign is an effort to sow panic among the Georgian population, or the result of undisciplined pilots or targeting is unclear. The panic level among Georgians was already high. On Sunday and Monday, the government several times warned residents that Russian troops were moving to capture Gori, and each time the warnings proved false.

After Mikheil Saakashvili, the president, went on television to say that Russian troops were moving towards Tbilisi, the capital's residents quickly bought up all the food and petrol they could, causing shortages.

"We were becoming a normal country," said Mr Goldelashvili, "but we have lost 10 years as a result of this war."

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