THOUSANDS of South Ossetians were grabbing everything they could carry to flee the fighting in their tiny homeland.

Packing into old lorries and decrepit Lada cars, they were heading away from the conflict as fast they could travel.

With parts of Tskhinvali, the capital, a smoking ruin and at least one hospital reportedly destroyed, there were few options for those seeking safety. Some estimates put the death toll in the city as high as 1,600.

Last night the Russian authorities claimed 30,000 people had already fled across the border into Russia for safety. Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, was in Vladikavkaz, in neighbouring North Ossetia, where thousands more had fled, to examine at first hand the reality of what Vitaly Churkin, the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, was calling “genocide”.

With the death toll and more than 30,000 having fled out of a total population of only 70,000, he mocked journalists’ questioning of his use of the term. “This is a small country: how many more dead do you want before you call it genocide?” he asked.

But as with most such vicious little conflicts, each side was behaving as brutally as the other. In Gori, Georgia, residents fled Russian air raids that had hit civilian apartment buildings far from the military targets the Russian air force appeared to be intent on destroying.

“There are reports that thousands are fleeing towards southern Russia and the Georgians are also evacuating women and children,” said Jennifer Abraham-son, a spokeswoman for Oxfam.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has asked both sides to grant aid agencies access to civilians and the wounded. “The humanitarian situation in the conflict zone has worsened dramatically,” said Dominique Liengme, the head of the ICRC delegation in Georgia.

Already there are allegations of atrocities on both sides: South Ossetians claimed Grad missiles have rained down indiscriminately on their capital and the surrounding villages.

Some refugees alleged yesterday that civilians were shot and kidnapped by Georgian soldiers rampaging through South Ossetia. Russian television has broadcast claims that some Russian peacekeepers already based in the unsettled region who were injured in the Georgian attack were subsequently executed. It is claimed 10 peacekeepers were killed and up to 150 injured in the Georgian attack.

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