Walking the walk in Georgia, part II

August 23, 2008 10:16:54 PM CDT

Thanks to all our ACTS friends for their continuing prayers.
Today Sunday August 24th is the second day the Russians have stopped the advance and continue some aspects of a withdrawal.
The Russians are not complying with the cease fire agreement signed by the Russian president which requires the Russian army to
withdraw to the August 6th position.

Instead the Russians have established 18 Russian checkpoints in the west of Georgia in Georgia territory that Georgia must pass through. They can refuse passage and 18 russian checkpoint in the east.

The main road trough Gori remains blocked because of the high concentration of land mines that the Russian left behind.

The Georgian government prohibits travel until the Georgian police and military can clear the land mines.

Also there are concerns for the unexplored cluster bombs that the Russian planes dropped certainly on Gori and perhaps in other places.

In addition to the ACTS team, the human rights watch organization has verified that during the war the Russian RBK-250 cluster bombs on August 12th in the town of Rusisi killed three civilians and wounded three in the attack.

Each cluster bomb has 30 PTAB 2.5m submunitions. On the same day another cluster attack in Gori killed at least 8 civilians and injured several dozen people.

Dutch jounralist Stan Storiman as among the dead and Israeli journalist Zadok Yehezkeli was seriously wounded and evacuated to Israel after surgery at the national Ghudusharuri medical center in Tbilisi.

The cluster bombs are banned by 107 nations. Human rights watch photo depicts a civilian in Rusisi holding a subpart of the a PTAB cluster bomb submunition without the knowledge that this "dud" could explore at any minute. There may be hundreds or even thousands of these unexploded particles with the bombed areas of the cities of Ruisi and Gori where the use of clutster bombs have been documented by the human rights watch based on hard evidence such as craters in Gori in the pattern of a cluster strike. Physicians at the hospitals reported injuries consistent with cluster bombs and photo evidence as mentioned before of the submunition.

In Kutaisi Temuri Ukebla is doing a great job. Today ACTS Kutaisi will deliver 2 tons of wheat flour to IDPs from the large donation to date. Once the road is safe or fairly safe we need to go to Kutaisi.

Our ACTS team is exhausted here. Guram as you may remember needs bilateral knee operations. The constant work has created continual pain for him. Everyone is stressed beyond belief including physical, mental and spiritual. This will persist until the day we believe that the advance has really stopped.

Warm regards,
Trish

 

Our ACTS team is exhausted here. Everyone is stressed beyond belief including physical, mental and spiritual. This will persist until the day we believe that the advance has really stopped.

ACTS is currently working to help over 10,000 IDPs. [IDP is NGO-speak for "Internally Displaced Person - i.e., a refugee within their own country. -the Armorer]  Below is alisting for a subset of 4,363 with their immediate needs. ACTS could buy these items in Tbilisi if we had money.

Urgently needed items for total of 4363 IDPs [of the approximately 10,000 ACTS is currently assisting] residing in Tbilisi, Manglisi and Dusheti. Reports estimate over 100,000 IDPs in Georgia now.