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Georgian troops were retreating under shellfire here today as the Russian military continued to press forward and take full control of South Ossetia.

Clouds of smoke rose up as artillery fire exploded in fields less than half a mile from the bridge marking South Ossetia’s border with Georgia. A group of Georgian soldiers hastily abandoned their truck after its wheels were shot out by a sniper and crossed the border on foot.

At a base next to the bridge, Russian peacekeepers appeared confident that they would soon be joined by comrades from the regular army advancing through South Ossetia from the north.

“The Georgians have left already and we are expecting the Russian side to come down the road soon. We are operating normally, nobody has disturbed us at all,” said Sadiq Narsudinov, one of the peacekeeping contingent. A Russian flag fluttered over the compound.

Georgian soldiers looked disheartened as they regrouped around tank lines about two kilometres from the border. Many said that they had been fighting in Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia, until the early hours when they were suddenly ordered to withdraw from the breakaway region.

“They told us to come out, I don’t know why. But some of our guys are still out there in the fields,” one soldier, Gakha Atsiauri, told The Times. “I want to go back and to stay. If we lose South Ossetia now it won’t be forever because we will never surrender our land.”

Frightened civilians appeared to be making their own judgment of the turn in events. Many were fleeing villages with their possessions along the road from the border to the Georgian city of Gori, apparently convinced that Russian troops would invade.

“There is a lot of panic, many people have left and I am thinking of joining them. My bags are already packed,” said Georgi, a 56-year-old resident of the village of Tirdznisi.

“We are afraid that the Russians will come here and kill us. People would not go if we had a strong army, but they don’t believe in our army any more. It’s a tragedy. When a man loses his motherland, then he’s no longer even a man.”

Iago Jokhadze abandoned his village of Ergneti close to Tskhinvali after it was bombed by Russian jets today.

Fighting back tears, he said: “I have left everything, I don’t even have another shirt. If the Russians stay, then I can never return. We’re afraid of what the Russians can do.”

In Gori, where a statue of Joseph Stalin, the city’s most famous son, still stands in the main square, anxious relatives scoured lists of the wounded put up outside the main hospital. More than 120 people have been admitted so far today and another 456 have been treated since fighting broke out on Friday.

The hospital’s chief surgeon, Professor Guzam Gvasalia, said that three civilians, including a pregnant woman, had died from their injuries.

He told The Times: “We are only waiting now to see what will happen. Russia could completely occupy Georgia now and the West will not do anything to stop them because they are afraid to go against them.

“Georgia did not attack Russia, Russia is attacking Georgia. They say they were protecting their citizens but we heard the same argument from Nazi Germany in taking the Sudetenland in 1938. Formally, Russia says it is protecting its citizens but in reality it is beginning a war.”

Scores of heavily-armed soldiers milled around on the road outside the hospital, with little apparent plan of action. One told The Times that they had all been in Tskhinvali but were now preparing to pull out of Gori in the direction of Tbilisi.

Then he spat out bitterly: “The situation was very bad there, but we were ready to stay. Russia is the enemy of the world.”

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