LONDON (AFP) - Georgian-born singer Katie Melua said Friday she was heartbroken at watching her country being "torn to pieces" and voiced fears for the safety of her family who are visiting the area.

Melua, 23, whose family moved from Tbilisi to Northern Ireland when she was eight, said she felt "naked, isolated and angry" as she watched events unfold on TV while on tour in Germany.

The singer of the 2005 worldwide hit "Nine Million Bicycles" wrote on her website: "I'm sitting in a hotel room in Germany in the middle of my summer tour with (the TV news) telling me that my home country is being torn to pieces.

"Throughout this week I haven't been able to stop watching the news. I've never seen it like this before, it's never made me feel so naked, isolated and angry."

Melua's mother Tamari and 16-year-old brother Zurab had been prevented from catching a flight back to Britain after Russian forces advanced into Georgia following fighting in the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

She said she was concerned that Russian troops remained in positions around the Georgian city of Gori, preventing her family members from travelling to the capital.

Melua said: "With the Russians still being in Gori there are reports that they have stopped fighting but you don't need to be killing a country's people or its soldiers to paralyse it.

"You see, Gori is right in the middle of the only road that goes from west to east across Georgia.

"It's the road that my mum and brother need to travel on to catch their return flight out of Tbilisi."

Melua also said she now feared for the future of her country.

"Georgia has always had shaky politics especially after the break-up of the Soviet Union and the civil war that followed in the 90s," she wrote.

"More recently things appeared to be getting better, the economy was growing, the major cities were starting to look cleaner, electricity blackouts like the ones when I lived there were almost unheard of.

"But after this last week everything seems uncertain again."

Source: AFP