Georgians fleeing the violence in South Ossetia have accused the Russian Army and its allies of atrocities, arson and organised looting.

Terrified refugees told of Cossack and Ossetian troops wreaking havoc in villages around the Ossetian capital Tskhinvali as Russian soldiers looked on. An estimated 118,000 people have now fled the conflict zone, most to Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi.

More than 500 were being sheltered yesterday at the derelict building that used to house Georgia’s Ministry of Finance. Zia Sabashvili, 39, spoke of how she fled with her husband and two daughters from the village of Khekvi as the Russian Army and its advance guard of irregulars approached.

“Cossacks came into our village and stole everything from people’s homes. Then they set them on fire,” she said. “My neighbour was 80 and she could not leave, so they burnt her to death in her home.”

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Mrs Sabashvili said that other refugees had told her that Ossetian and Cossack soldiers had dragged a 15-year-old girl from their minibus near Kareleti, between Ossetia and the Georgian city of Gori, which remained under occupation by Russian troops and tanks yesterday.

“They took a liking to this girl and pulled her out in front of her parents. Then they forced the bus to drive on. Nobody could do anything.”

Uran Jojoshvili said that his uncle, Valeko, 65, had been killed by marauding Ossetian irregulars in the village of Vanatzi. He said: “They kicked his door to steal everything but when they saw him they shot him twice in the heart. They were evil, stealing everything and shooting everyone.”

The tales from Georgia are chillingly familiar to anyone who witnessed the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s or the current conflict in Darfur: masked fighters at impromptu roadblocks, refugees stripped of their meagre posessions pleading for their lives at gunpoint, plumes of smoke rising over torched and looted villages.

They point to the increasing presence of paramilitaries on the world’s battlefields carrying out the dirty work of murder and “ethnic cleansing” that regular armies balk at.

Idrak Abbasov, a reporter for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, witnessed many irregular fighters on the streets of Gori, identified by white armbands, some from Chechnya.

The paramilitaries shot at journalists and UN aid workers, who were forced to flee their vehicles.

“The Russian Army can’t be bothered to bring the paramilitaries under control. Its attitude is ‘let them have their revenge’,” Thomas de Waal, the institute’s Caucasus editor, said.

On the road to Gori yesterday, Margarita Akhvlediani and her husband were dragged out of their car by four unkempt Ossetian fighters brandishing weapons. The fighters stole their car, video camera, money and personal papers.

Ms Akhvlediani, who is a Georgian journalist, told The Times: “We were in an area that nobody controlled. There were no Georgians or Russians there. The gunmen came from the forest, like partisans, shooting and shouting, wild men with strange eyes. They spoke Ossetian and were wearing camouflage, the same as the Georgian Army, but they weren’t like the proper army.” The couple said they were lucky to escape with their lives.

Many reports are now emerging of murderous paramilitaries on the rampage, the Russian Army either unwilling or unable to help them.

As refugees sorted through clothes and donated groceries at Kindergarten No 170 in Shanidze Street, Tbilisi, yesterday, Georgi Miasukadze said his friend had witnessed a 75-year-old neighbour, Tengiz Mindiashvili, being killed after attempting to flee invading Cossacks. He said: “They caught up with him, dragged him back to his home, locked him in and set fire to it.”

Brutality was not, however, the monopoly of the irregulars, according to the refugees.

Elsa Kasradze and her sister Nazo spoke of how they had fled with their terrified children in a car as a Russian aircraft fired shots along the road around them.

“They were shooting at houses to destroy them but they knew that there were only civilians there, not military,” Nazo said. “There were bodies of people who had been shot all along the road.”

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