KEY POINTS:
Dr Georgi Abramishvili had treated the injured in Russia's first attack on a Georgian city. Yesterday, he died in the last one. The young surgeon was killed by a missile from a jet smashing into the grounds of Gori's hospital, streaking past the Red Cross flag put on the roof in a vain attempt to avoid attack.
Over three hours, before the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, ordered a ceasefire, Gori was hit in a ground and air attack. Eight people died, among them Abramishvili, and Stan Storimans, a Dutch journalist.
Gori, the birthplace of Stalin, had, to a large extent, already emptied before this assault. By yesterday, only a few people were left to wander along the deserted streets amid the acrid smoke billowing from burnt buildings and cars. A pool of blood lay where Abramishvili died walking across the clinic complex.
The few patients still left were hastily evacuated. "We managed to get them away but this is a terrible, terrible loss of a very talented life," said Professor Gurami Guasalia. "Georgi was one of our best young doctors. He could have left but chose to stay behind to do his job and help the sick. The outside world should be told what is going on here."
Storimans, a cameraman with the television channel RTL, was trying to do just that when he was killed by a Russian shell. His colleague, correspondent Jeroen Akkermans, was severely injured.
Yesterday, the main road to Gori from the capital, Tblisi, was virtually free of traffic and dotted with bombed Georgian Army tanks and cars. Patches of fields on either side were ablaze from Russian helicopter gunship fire, the villages between them bereft of people.
Just a half dozen kilometres north-west of Gori, however, were people who thrive at a time of violence and lawlessness: a band of men, most in civilian clothes, some in assorted combat fatigues, all carrying guns. Locals were of the opinion that come nightfall they would go into Gori to loot from the abandoned homes and shops damaged by bombing. This is now the legacy of this brutal conflict.
- INDEPENDENT
