Ossetians provoked Georgians intentionally, and any response, tough or mild, would have been used anyway as a pretext for attack. Even if Georgians had taken it lying down, then Abkhazians would anyway have started their prepared operation of cleaning-up the upper Kodori. When the war is planned, there is always the pretext.
According to testimony by witnesses, the missile brigade of the 58th Army was put on the Georgian territory through Rokskiy Tunnel. This brigade is equipped with the MLRS “Uragan” and ballistic missiles “Tochka-U”. The “Grad” systems with caliber of 122 mm, unlike the more powerful “Uragan”, are little effective when striking cities or dug in troops. The “Tochka-U” (with the range of 110 km) is capable of reaching Tbilisi and vicinities from the district of Tskhinvali. Its high-explosive and fragmentation warhead covers 3 hectares, while the cassette one covers 7 hectares.

MLRS “Uragan” and “Tochka-U” were used in mass for shooting in Chechnya in 1999 and 2000, which caused mass death of innocent civilians and the destruction. Last week some targets in the Western Georgia were shot at from Abkhazia with the use of rockets “Tochka-U”. The launches were registered by the American global system of monitoring the missile launch. Abkhazian authorities stated it’s them to have done that shooting. Now Russia may allege it’s Ossetians shooting at Tbilisi as a revenge for Tskhinvali. Similar attacks, undoubtedly, would cause a terrible panic in Tbilisi, which might help overthrowing the Saakashvili’s regime.
http://en.novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/59/01.html

In the meanwhile, the Human Rights Watch working in the zone of conflict has made a statement about unreliability of information about the number of killed. “Judging from experience of other armed conflicts, the number of wounded is three times as big as that of killed” said the organization’s expert Tatiana Lokshina, who is in the South Ossetia now, to a Novaya Gazeta correspondent. “If the Russian media speak of 2 thousand killed, then there must be at least 6 thousand wounded people, and probably tens of thousands. However, when visiting the field hospitals in the Northern and South Ossetia, the doctors reported to us about tens – not even hundreds – of the wounded. In this conflict we are dealing with inhuman quantity of misinformation. No one can really understand what has actually happened here”.
http://en.novayagazeta.ru/data/2008/59/00.html