UN chief urges immediate end to fighting across Georgia

UNITED NATION: â€" UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called for an immediate end to the fighting engulfing Georgia, voicing fears that the deadly violence has spread beyond the country's breakaway South Ossetia region and urging all sides to seek a peaceful solution to their conflict.

As the U.N. Security Council remained deadlocked in calling for a truce, Ban issued a statement Saturday night, saying he was alarmed by “the escalation of hostilities in Georgia which have resulted in large numbers of casualties and massive destruction in South Ossetia and other regions of Georgia.�

Russia sent its tanks and troops to pro-Moscow South Ossetia Friday in response to pro-Western Georgia's military offensive to take back the province, which broke away in the early 1990s after a separatist war.

Georgian and Russian forces exchanged artillery fire overnight, South Ossetia officials said, while Russian planes bombed the runway of a military airfield near Tbilisi international airport according to a Georgian official.