(BRUSSELS) - Security is improving in Georgia, allowing humanitarian groups to work more effectively, but aid is still not getting into the flashpoint area of South Ossetia, the EU Commission said Wednesday.

"The security situation is improving day by day," a spokeswoman for the European Union's executive arm told reporters.

However "in South Ossetia there is no access," she added, referring to the Georgian breakaway region where the fighting started and which Russia, which already had peacekeepers there, now fully controls.

"We hope that the aid or civil protection agencies will all be able to work as soon as possible in South Ossetia as well," the spokeswoman said.

There are now some 124,000 refugees and displaced persons from the Russia-Georgia conflict as a whole and 672 tent camps set up in Georgia to deal with some of the most vulnerable, according to the commission, the EU's executive arm.

Early Wednesday more Swedish and Austrian aid reached Tbilisi while France provided an aircraft to help with the distribution of aid.

International Committee for the Red Cross president Jakob Kellenberger said in Geneva Wednesday that ICRC experts were heading into South Ossetia to assess the needs there and should arrive later in the day.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had approved the presence of the Red Cross in the disputed Georgian territory, said Kellenberger.

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