Tskhinvali: How badly was it hit?

As Russian troops pounded through Georgia last week, the Kremlin and its allies repeatedly pointed to one justification above all others: The Georgian military had destroyed the city of Tskhinvali. They said the physical damage to the city in the breakaway province of South Ossetia was comparable to Stalingrad, and the killings -- they claimed more than 2,000 dead -- to genocide. That explanation -- that Russians were saving South Ossetians from annihilation -- undergirded Moscow's rationale for the invasion. But how bad was it, really? Three American reporters who traveled to the city over the weekend filed varying reports on the depth of devastation. Here are excerpts of what they found. SCALE OF DESTRUCTION NOT IN QUESTION - NUMBER OF DEAD IS

By PETER FINN • Washington Post

The war here cut a swath of destruction, severely damaging many homes and apartment buildings.

Gaping holes scar five-story blocks of apartments, the detritus of what was once ordinary life blown onto shattered balconies.

In one neighborhood, along Telman Street, house after crumpled house was a scorched shell, bricks piled high in basements exposed to the sunlight. The area is about 200 yards from destroyed separatist government buildings, an acknowledged target of Georgian forces.

A school, a library and a kindergarten were blackened and pockmarked from small-arms fire, as were the houses around them.

At certain moments, in certain places, the smell of rotting corpses was in the air.

The scale of the destruction is undeniable; some streets summon iconic images of Stalingrad during World War II or Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, which was leveled in two wars between Russian troops and Chechen separatists.

But the number of dead here remains in dispute. When challenged on the 2,100 figure by reporters, who cited statements by medical workers and human rights groups that there was no evidence of such a high death toll, South Ossetia's Minister of Interior Mikhail Minsayev said people quickly buried the dead in their yards or took the bodies to North Ossetia in Russia for burial.

In conversations here, everyone interviewed said they had lost either no family members or one person. But those were interviews with people whose cellars had held. Many clearly had not.

But one thing was clear: The war has poisoned people here against any future connection with Georgia.

"Georgia is finished here; they are never coming back," Georgi Bestaev said. "We cannot live without Russia. We must become part of Russia, because we can't handle the problem independently."

NO SIGN OF GENOCIDE; NORMAL LIFE BEGINS TO RETURN TO CITY

By MEGAN K. STACK • Los Angeles Times

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."

As of Sunday, Tskhinvali Regional Hospital had confirmed the deaths of 40 people, said Tina Zakharova, an Ossetian doctor who showed the Los Angeles Times a log listing the deaths. That figure included both civilians and combatants -- people who died at the hospital, whose bodies were brought there or whose families reported burying their dead.

But "there will be more," she said. The task of counting the dead was complicated, she said, because some families buried their dead in the yard, unable to bring the corpses to the hospital to be registered. The downtown of Tskhinvali sustained heavy damage in a five-day barrage of rockets and missiles as Russian troops and their local allies battled Georgian forces.

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.

By Sunday, Ossetians were out in the streets, tidying up and swapping stories of ordeals spent as refugees or cowering in bomb shelters. Ossetian militiamen milled about in ragtag camouflage, knotted bandanas and half-grown beards, but ordinary life was beginning to stir on the streets -- girls in flowered dresses wandered past, and clusters of old men bent together.

As for Georgia, resentment is deep and raw.

"They were the closest to us before the war, and now they are the most frightening enemy," said Evelina Kulumbekova, 49, who lived out the fighting in the basement of her apartment building. "It feels like your own brother has cut off your head."

Said South Ossetian government spokeswoman Irina Gagloyeva: "You see what the Georgians have done here. They see Georgians as murderers."

CITY IS SCARRED BY FIGHTING, BUT MOSTLY, IT STILL STANDS

By TOM LASSETER • McClatchy News Service

The difference between Russian officials' description of Tskhinvali and the facts on the ground are profound.

Russian Col. Gen Anatoly Nogovitsyn said Tuesday that "Tskhinvali doesn't exist, it's like Stalingrad was after the war."

But a trip to the city on Sunday, without official minders, revealed a very different picture.

While there was extensive damage to some structures, most buildings had front doors on their hinges and standing walls.

For every building charred by explosions -- the Georgians are accused of using multiple rocket launcher systems -- there were others on tree-lined streets that looked untouched.

One government center was hollowed out by blasts, but the one next to it teemed with workers.

A doctor at the city's main hospital, the only one open during the battles that began late on Aug. 7, said the facility recorded 40 deaths. The discrepancy raises serious questions about the veracity of the Kremlin's version of events.

Not only was the destruction in Tskhinvali a far cry from Stalingrad after World War II, it was well short of what happened in the southern Beirut suburbs during Israel's war with Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, or the Iraqi city of Fallujah during U.S. fighting against insurgents in November 2004.

In short, the city was scarred but still standing.