One week ago, Luisa Dzagoeva was trimming hair in a salon in Tskhinvali, the capital of Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia. Now she has lost everything -- her home, her job, and hopes for a stable, peaceful life.

The fierce battle between Russian and Georgian forces over the province has killed numerous civilians and reduced much of Dzagoeva's city to smoldering rubble, including her house and the beauty parlor where she was employed.

Luisa and her mother managed to flee to neighboring North Ossetia, in Russia, after hiding in a cellar for four days.

"We came here in a truck transporting potatoes," she said. "We all sat on the floor. There was one wounded person with us, and we were asked to pick up another person with injuries along the way. Before that, we spent four days in a cellar with no gas or electricity. All the cables had been ripped out and were lying on the ground."

Her mother, a diabetic, is now receiving intensive care in one of the field hospitals set up in and around the North Ossetian capital of Vladikavkaz. Luisa herself was treated for light shrapnel wounds.

Russian authorities say more than 30,000 South Ossetians have fled their homes since fighting started on the night of August 7-8.

Most of them, like Luisa, try to reach North Ossetia. But as Russian journalist Ilya Barabanov tells RFE/RL's Russian Service from a village in South Ossetia, not all are able -- or even fit enough -- to reach the Russian border.

"The situation is truly catastrophic here. There are several hundred refugees in this village. Efforts are made to somehow transfer them to Vladikavkaz, but huge traffic jams block the roads," Barabanov says. "People are trying to leave in cars and new wounded people keep pouring into the village. An aid post has been set up outside. Surgery takes place in the open air."

Supplies Growing Scarce

The fighting has also forced scores of Georgians out of their homes.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says 80 percent of the population of Gori, a Georgian city just south of the de facto border with South Ossetia, have fled in fear of further attacks.

Goga Aptsiauri, RFE/RL's Georgian Service correspondent in Gori, says as few as 5,000 residents currently remain in the city of 50,000, and that food and other supplies are growing scarce.

The UN says 80 percent of the residents of Gori have left to escape further attacks.