GORI, Georgia --- Flies buzz around broken food jars, singed book pages flutter in the breeze and water pours from a twisted kitchen faucet in the remnants of Zurab Gvarientashvili's apartment, smashed by a bomb as Russian forces advanced.

One day after Russians withdrew from the central city of Gori, residents began venturing back Saturday in a homecoming laced with despair, disbelief and anger.

"Barbarians, that's what they are. They kill innocent people here ... how many kilometers outside the battlefield? They bombed all over Georgia," the 31-year-old factory engineer said. "And what for? So that innocent people suffer?"

Gori is 18 miles south of the capital of the separatist region South Ossetia, where Georgian forces launched an assault Aug. 7 that sparked the war.

On Saturday, crowds of people and cars jammed makeshift checkpoints set up outside Gori by Georgian police trying to control the mass return. Those who made it through found a city battered by bombs, suffering from food shortages and gripped by anguish.

Passers-by drove by in openmouthed disbelief as they looked at the mangled wreck of metal and charred concrete that used to be the apartment block where Mr. Gvarientashvili's relatives lived.

He said three bombs fell on the complex Aug. 11-12; they were targeting the Georgian army's artillery training facility in the hills above the block. At least two people died in his entranceway.

Residents on one neighborhood jammed into a small, metal garage to register for the rice, sugar, salt and other food aid they say has been slow in arriving.

"It's hard to be in your own city and see someone else's soldiers roaming your streets. I didn't sleep for 15 days," said Zurab Tetriashvili, a 45-year-old university professor.

In some devastated towns, the only visitors were looters. In the village of Kekhvi, the ethnic Georgian homes had been burned. An AP reporter saw Ossetian men hauling away cutlery, electronics, food and even Orthodox icons.