Hundreds of people are reported dead after Russian forces responded to a Georgian attack on rebels in the breakaway province of South Ossetia by mounting a full scale invasion. By Adrian Blomfield in Gori Columns of Russian tanks plunged the two neighbours into war as they filed into South Ossetia, marking the Kremlin's first military assault on foreign soil since the Soviet Union's Afghanistan intevention, which ended in 1989. Russian tanks rolled towards the capital of South Ossetia and fighters bombed Georgian air bases after Georgia launched attacks on rebels in the breakaway region. South Ossetia won de-facto independence in a war which ended in 1992 but has been a source of tension ever since, along with Abkhazia, another separatist region. The confrontation between the two countries deepened in April when Nato promised...
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