U.N. agency: 118,000 Georgians displaced

TBILISI, Georgia, Aug. 15 (UPI) -- The Georgian-Russian conflict has displaced more than 118,000 people, the U.N. High Commission on Refugees reported Friday.

Based on figures provided by Georgian and Russian officials, the refugees agency said 30,000 people fled from breakaway province South Ossetia, where the confrontation began, to North Ossetia in Russia, while 15,000 South Ossetians fled into other areas in Georgia, the commission said in a news release.

In addition, some 73,000 people are displaced in Georgia, including most of the population of Gori, which is near South Ossetia.

The agency said it escorted to safety more than 700 residents of the Khodori Valley in Georgia's other breakaway region, Abkhazia, in a two-day operation.

The U.N. refugee agency said it delivered 66 tons of relief supplies to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi Friday as part of its humanitarian effort.

South Ossetian official Eleonora Bedoyeva said the province's capital city of Tskhinvali has been reduced to about 20 percent of its normal 38,000, Russian media outlet Interfax reported.

"But the people have started to return little by little," Bedoyeva said. "We are distributing free bread, drinking water and the necessities."