User:Nanobear~enwiki/SO war august clashes old version

Pre-war clashes

At 8:05 a.m. on August 1, two roadside bombs hit a Georgian police vehicle on a detour road connecting Georgian-populated villages near the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. Five police officers were wounded (six according to the secondary sources ). Late in the evening, intense fighting broke out between Georgian troops and the forces of South Ossetia. Georgia claimed that South Ossetian separatists had shelled Georgian villages in violation of a ceasefire. South Ossetia denied provoking the conflict. A South Ossetian militiaman was killed by a sniper located in a Georgian police post. The Russian peacekeeping command reported that snipers killed at least three people in Tskhinvali around 9 p.m. The command also reported that Tskhinvali came under mortar fire from the Georgian villages of Ergneti and Zemo Nikozi. At 11 p.m. on August 1, according to the South Ossetian republican hospital in Tskhinvali, six people died as a result of their injuries. Seven people had been injured.

On August 2, shelling and shooting resumed overnight. Mamuka Kurashvili, a Georgian Defense Ministry official in charge of overseeing peacekeeping operations, reported that the Georgian side had opened fire in response to shelling of Georgian villages. According to the Georgian Interior Ministry, six civilians and one Georgian police officer were injured as a result of shelling of the Georgian villages of Zemo Nikozi, Kvemo Nikozi, Nuli and Ergneti. The South Ossetian side claimed that two additional people, including a Russian soldier from the Russian North Ossetian peacekeeping battalion, were killed on August 2, bringing the toll to six people killed and approximately 15 injured as a result of intense shooting by Georgian troops directed towards Tskhinvali and nearby Ossetian villages late on August 1 and overnight on August 2.

On August 5, Russian ambassador-at-large Yuri Popov warned that Russia would intervene in the event of military conflict. Dmitry Medoyev declared from Moscow that volunteers were already arriving, primarily "from North Ossetia," in the Republic of South Ossetia to offer help in the event of Georgian aggression.

On August 6, South Ossetia and Georgia failed to agree on the format of talks. South Ossetian side had proposed holding a JCC session with the participation of Georgian, South Ossetian, Russian and Russia’s North Ossetian negotiators in Tskhinvali scheduled for August 9. Tbilisi has consistently refused to participate in the quadripartite JCC talks.
According to the eyewitness account of a Nezavisimaya gazeta correspondent, Georgian military started sporadic heavy shelling of Tskhinvali on August 6. The eyewitness claims, weapons used by the Georgian military were mortars, artillery and sniper rifles. South Ossetian military officials speculated that the Georgian army was preparing for a full-scale attack on the city. Russian correspondents reported that the city was under artillery and mortar fire that continued all night long.

According to Moscow Defense Brief, an English-language defense magazine published by the independent research organization Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, "Over the course of several days in early August, the Georgians appear to have secretly concentrated a significant number of troops and equipment (the full 2th, 3th and 4th Infantry Brigades, the Artillery Brigade, the elements of the 1th Infantry Brigade, the separate Gori Tank Battalion – total the nine light infantry and five tank battalions, up to eight artillery battalions – plus special forces and Ministry of the Internal Affairs troops – all in all, up to 16,000 men) in the Georgian enclaves in the South Ossetian conflict zone, under cover of providing support for the exchange of fire with Ossetian formations."