Air of revenge hangs over Georgia conflict zone

KURTA, Georgia (Reuters) - Acrid smoke fills the air along a winding road that leads to the Georgian rebel town of Tskhinvali. Some local people call it the smell of revenge.

"This is the Ossetians burning the Georgian villages," said one man, a driver who identified himself as Umar. "Unfortunately the time for revenge has come."

Months of tension over South Ossetia escalated into fierce fighting this month after Georgia tried to recapture the breakaway, pro-Russian region and Moscow responded with crushing military force.

Russian troops drove out a Georgian force that briefly seized parts of South Ossetia, but mutual resentment is still running high in this tiny sliver of land in the Caucasus.

And the fact the separatists and their Russian backers now control pockets of the region that until now were under Tbilisi's control and populated by ethnic Georgians has unleashed a wave of destruction.

A Reuters reporter travelling through villages near the rebel capital Tskhinvali that were historically populated by South Ossetia's ethnic Georgian minority said many houses and cars were on fire. Some Georgian villages were completely deserted.

In one village, Kurta, two bulldozers operated by men in fatigues were seen demolishing village huts, raising columns of dust into the air and knocking down electricity poles.

Nearby, by the roadside, a dead cow was being skinned in the open by a group of soldiers in South Ossetian military uniforms.

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