Red Cross to focus on missing in Georgia

GENEVA-Aid workers from the International Committee of the Red Cross, who have reached South Ossetia, will focus on visiting detainees and helping families trace missing loved ones, an ICRC spokesman said on Thursday.An ICRC team is the only international aid organization to deploy so far in Tskhinvali, capital of the breakaway Georgian province which is under Russia's military control.But arriving late on Wednesday, after waiting a week for security clearances, it found that Russia's emergency aid agency EMERCOM had taken charge of the relief effort in the city, providing medicines, food and water to civilians, it said."We are very happy to be here and to play our role, but we should have been here days ago. There are still needs, not only for goods but for expertise," ICRC spokesman David-Pierre Marquet told Reuters by telephone from Tskhinvali."We will concentrate our work on protection of the civilian population-tracing missing persons, restoring family links and visiting people who have been detained," he said.Dozens of families have approached the ICRC team seeking its services to trace people who remain unaccounted for, and it has received allegations about people held in captivity, he said.Helping families trace missing relatives and visiting people detained in armed conflicts to check on their treatment are traditional tasks of the neutral humanitarian agency.The ICRC team in South Ossetia consists of seven expatriates and 10 locals.

To read more go to:

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSLL7256420080821

As in the days of Noah...