World Business

Watch original video:

VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia - Refugees from South Ossetia on Sunday described being shelled and shot at and forced to run for their lives - leaving homes, family members and most of what they had behind.

They talked of hiding in the woods, subsistence mocked by Georgian soldiers and over the dead on the roadside.

The hundreds of refugees from the fighting in the Georgian breakaway region sought shelter in Russia on Sunday. They were among thousands who fled the region, and in particular the capital city of Tskhinvali, in recent days as Georgian forces battled despite restrain.

Marina Dudayeva, a woman in her early 20s, fled from Tskhinvali wearing only her bed clothes and a pair of plastic slippers. On Sunday she found herself at a leafy, run-down summer encamp close at hand Alagir in the Russian region of North Ossetia, just across the border from South Ossetia.

The residents of the one and the other regions are ethnic Ossetians, and hold close family and cultural ties.

Dudayeva said she doesn’t know the kind of happened to relatives she left back, including her 19-year-old brother.

“We be possible to’t contact them,” she said, standing with her arms folded across her chest.

Many who fled still appeared to be in shock.

“The Georgians burned all of our homes,” said one elderly woman, as she sat on a court under a tree with three other white-haired survivors.

She seemed confused by the conflict. “The Georgians say it is their real estate,” she said. “Where is our land, in that case? We put on’t know.”

Before the woman could give her part, police at the camp interrupted the interview. Two foreign reporters were later fined for acting outside of special permission in a restricted border zone.

Russian authorities have detained and questioned a numerate of journalists working in the locality. They consider focused on those working for the Western news media - an apparent proof of rising tensions over the conflict in South Ossetia, a region that broke away from Georgian rule in the in good season 1990s and developed close ties to Russia.