Both sides have traded accusations of genocide.

Russia has accused Georgia of killing more than 2,000 people, mostly civilians, in the separatist province of South Ossetia. The claim couldn't be independently confirmed, but witnesses who fled the area over the weekend said hundreds had died.

Many Georgians also have been killed in the fighting and on Tuesday, the Georgian security council said it filed a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice for alleged ethnic cleansing. The overall death toll was expected to rise because large areas of Georgia were still too dangerous for journalists to enter and see the true scope of the damage.

"It feels like an annexed country," said Lasha Margiana, the local administrator in one of the villages in the Kodori Gorge, where fleeing Georgians said the entire population had abandoned their homes.

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