August 25, 2008 U.S. aid continues to pour into Georgia Play video

(NECN: Batumi, Georgia) - US Navy personnel continued unloading 82 pallets of humanitarian aid from a US warship docked at the Georgian port of Batumi yesterday.

The aid is destined for many of the Georgian IDPs (internally displaced people) who have been made homeless by the destruction wrought by the Russian forces.

Five days of fighting damaged cities and towns across the country and displaced tens of thousands of Georgians.

The conflict between Russia and Georgia started when Georgian forces launched an assault on August 7th in the separatist region of South Ossetia, and Russian forces went in, sparking the war and an international crisis.

Under an European Union-brokered cease-fire deal, both sides are to pull back to positions held before the fighting erupted.

Western leaders have called for a complete withdrawal of Russian combat troops from Georgia, and for peacekeeping forces to resume the positions they had in South Ossetia before the conflict.

But Russia said it will patrol buffer zones stretching into Georgia proper.

The conflict brought Russian-U.S. relations to a post-Cold War low.

Edin Toatley, US Navy assistant supply officer of the USS McFaul:

"We're offloading all of our humanitarian supplies. We load them on our flight deck, which is the aft end or the rear end of the ship. We have a crane that comes alongside to pick up the humanitarian goods from the aft end of the ship and we load it on the

barges. From there we bring it onto shore and once it gets here we load it on trucks and it gets taken off to support the people of Georgia."

Bryan Lefave, Logistics coordinator for USAID:

"Well, with everything that's coming in it's 82 pallets, about 155,000 pounds of aid coming in, and what we do is through the assessments from our non-governmental organizations, our NGOs, our partners that USAID deals with, we, based on the assessments, will distribute the aid as needed, so the NGOs, our partners, they'll come in, they'll receive the goods, take it out and distribute it to wherever the IDPs or wherever the camps are that need it."