Photo

Click on photo to enlarge

AP Photo/Darko Bandic

An aid worker looks on as residents wait for humanitarian aid distributed from a bus in Gori, northwest of the Georgian capital Tbilisi, Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008. Russian military authorities issued a flurry of conflicting reports Sunday about whether Russian troops had begun to pull out of South Ossetia, one of Georgia's two separatist provinces.

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — The need for food in Georgia is growing, a U.S. general said Tuesday as C-130 transport planes ferried in tons of supplies and the American military said it would aid Georgians displaced by the war with Russia for as long as they need help.

U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Jon Miller said he was told food is the major issue for people west of the capital, Tbilisi, because only sporadic convoys carrying rations had been able to get through.

Georgian government officials said Russian checkpoints had made it difficult to get supplies into some areas, including Poti, a port city on the Black Sea cost.

Georgian Finance Minister Nika Gilavri told The Associated Press that the government hoped to truck 30,000, meals-ready-to-eat and 40,000 humanitarian daily rations, a two-day supply, to the strategic city of Gori on the main East-West highway later Tuesday. In a meeting with Miller and members of USAID Tuesday, Gilavri said they also hoped to take 12,000 sets of food rations to smaller towns in western Georgia.

Efforts to get food elsewhere had, in some cases, been slowed by Russian troops, Gilavri said.

"Right now there are Russian soldiers and tanks at Poti," Gilavri said. "They want to open every single container" and inspect them.

Miller said best estimates show about 80,000 Georgians were displaced by the fierce fighting, and about 50 percent of those in and around Tbilisi.

"People were pushed out of their homes literally with the clothes on their back," Miller told the AP.

The United Nations refugee agency estimates that a total of 158,000 people have been displaced by the fighting, including those within the breakaway region of South Ossetia, the center of the conflict, and across the Russian border in North Ossetia.

Miller said that in Tbilisi, most refugees were being sheltered in schools, municipal buildings and, in some cases, structures that were previously condemned.

Those refugees were in need of blankets and cots, but Miller said Georgia's government says it has been able to provide them with enough food.

Miller arrived in Georgia on Monday with a team of 25 personnel to begin a thorough assessment of the humanitarian needs in the small, U.S.-backed country, and has met with non-governmental organizations on the ground and Georgia government officials.

"There is no one situation that applies to every one of the locales," Miller said, adding that one key food being sought was infant formula. He said the Georgian Ministry of Health told him 40 pregnant women were among the displaced from Gori.

"They're particularly concerned about that," he said.

The U.S. military efforts to provide relief to displaced Georgians will continue "until there is no longer a need," Air Force Brig. Gen. William Uhle told The Associated Press in Germany late Monday.

"Our goal in this operation is to save lives and to alleviate the suffering of the Georgian people,"

Uhle, assistant vice commander of the 3rd Air Force, Ramstein Air Base, said late Monday night.

Supplies, including cots, bedding, medicine and now food have been arriving in Tbilisi from Germany and Italy since last week, and are scheduled to keep flying in, he said. Three C-130 flights are arriving per day, each carrying up to 20,000 pounds of supplies in an air bridge carried out by the 37th Airlift Squadron.

"We will continue on this mission until the government of Georgia and the Department of State determines there is no longer a need," he said.