TSKHINVALI, Georgia — A visit to this war-strafed city Sunday turned up no proof of Russian claims that more than 2,000 people died here. Nor was there any ready sign of what Prime Minister Vladimir Putin referred to as “genocide.”
The question of how many people died at Georgian hands is significant in part because Moscow has used a shocking death toll to justify its overwhelming military response.
The downtown of Tskhinvali, capital of the breakaway republic of South Ossetia, sustained heavy damage in a five-day barrage of rockets and missiles as Russian troops and their local allies battled Georgian forces.
As of Sunday, Tskhinvali Regional Hospital had confirmed the deaths of 40 people in the violence. That figure included both civilians and combatants — people who died at the hospital, whose bodies were brought to the hospital or whose families reported burying their dead in villages.
It has been more than a week since Georgia launched a large-scale military operation in South Ossetia, bent on forcing the pro-Russian rebel region back under the control of the central government. Instead, Georgian soldiers were forced into humiliating defeat in an overwhelming counterattack by Russian troops.
By Sunday, Ossetians were out in the streets, tidying up and swapping stories of ordeals spent as refugees or cowering in bomb shelters.
South Ossetian authorities were still laboring Sunday to figure out how many people were killed, Dr. Tina Zakharova said. The task was complicated because some families simply buried their dead in the yard, unable to bring the corpses to the hospital to be registered. “There will be more,” she said.
Russian officials have claimed the city was flattened, comparing the wreckage to the Battle at Stalingrad during World War II. Leaders in Moscow repeatedly have referred to genocide and to thousands of corpses.
Burned-out tanks remained scattered on the streets of the regional capital, but the city’s roads and bridges remained relatively unscathed.
Many buildings had windows shattered and roofs destroyed; some appeared to have caught fire and burned to charred shells.
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