Eyewitness Accounts, Survivors of Georgia's Aggression Against South Ossetia

Alina Dzhioyeva

"I remember only snatches of what happened. Deafening silence fell the morning after the first bombardment. Only the people who were in the city with me can understand how I felt. My ears ached after the horrible noise. I remember thinking there were no birds singing, they all flew away somewhere, like in the first war.

Then, too, they flew around in flocks before they disappeared. There were no men with us - some were at work and others on military duty. My neighbours and I believed the peacekeepers' base was the only place to shelter us women. Suddenly, as if they had heard us, a guy with a submachine gun appeared. We showered him with questions. 'There are no peacekeepers any more. All killed in the bombing,' was the only thing he said. Imagine our shock! "Valery Gergiev came to the city with the Mariinsky Orchestra after the war. We never had hoped to hear it. But I was distracted during the concert.

I thought who of my friends and relatives I hadn't phoned yet to ask how they were. The orchestra was playing Shostakovich as I thought how lucky I was. My relatives all sur- vived while many families in the city perished to the last man - and there I was, alive and listening to beautiful music. I was reassuring myself that it was a requiem for the dead, so I could listen. Anyway, I had an eerie feeling. It defies words. We all felt an overwhelming sense of guilt for surviving."
 

Irina Kelekhsayeva

"The concept of time simply did not exist for three days. It was dark and frightening in the basement, no one knew who would survive and who was destined to die there. There was no point screaming - the noise of explosions covered all sound. "I realised that three days had passed only after I left the charred and ruined Tskhinval. "Wednesday August 7 was a day of hope. All people of South Ossetia were anxiously waiting what the visit of Timur Yakobashvili, the Georgian presidential envoy for conflicts, would bring. "Reporters from all news agencies had been phoning South Ossetian members of the Joint Control Commission for the settlement of the Geor- gian-South Ossetian conflict nonstop two days before. Yet no one could tell them anything explicit because decisions were made by Yakobashvili and Yury Popov, JCC chairman for Russia, at the negotiating table. Popov had come to Tbilisi the day before. The people of Tskhinval waited for him impatiently.

At night on August 7, journalists heard that Popov and Yakobashvili were in Tskhinval at last, and were meeting with Marat Kulakhmetov, commander of the Joint Peacekeeping Forces (JPKF). South Ossetia was not represented at the meeting. "At long last, Vladimir Ivanov, chief of the JPKF press service, invited all South Ossetian journalists to a news conference at the peacekeepers' headquarters in Tskhinval.

Everyone rushed there. "A red-and-white striped turnpike barred the HQ entrance, at an army base. Journalists flocking at the front represented South Ossetian and foreign television channels and newspapers. Ivanov told them there was not going to be a news conference but that Kulakhmetov would address them. Everyone was disappointed to see Popov and Boris Chochiyev, JCC co-chairman for South Ossetia, getting in the car and driving away. Yakobashvili left as soon as he finished his talk with Kulakhmetov, while Popov and Chochiyev went to see President Kokoity in the Council of Ministers bunker, as we found out later. "After that, Popov addressed the journalists alone.

He said South Ossetian-Georgian negotiations were scheduled to take place on August 8, with Russia mediating. Everyone was relieved - talks would bring down the suspense that had been building up since the start of August. "Even people totally ignorant of politics phoned me, a journalist, late at night to ask what results the meeting had brought. Everyone realised its importance. When I told them the talks were to start the following day, they wished each other a good night's sleep, finally without shooting. "But at 11 p.m. everyone in Tskhinval heard the sound of shelling that came from every direction. At first they targeted Ossetian positions and then the entire city. They were using Grad rocket launchers prohibited worldwide, and never used against civilians.

That was the start of our first day of trying to survive in the basements. "The basement seemed like the best possible shelter. All we had to do was find the safest spot inside it. We decided it was a passage ce mented on two sides. That was where we took refuge. The first night we spent crouching in that passage felt like the longest night in my life. The shelling continued nonstop. We heard shells whizzing by and blowing up in a shower of splinters as they hit walls.

The building above us shook as walls and windows went crushing. Electricity went off ten minutes after the shelling started. "We thought the nightmare would end at daybreak, that people would come to their senses and good would triumph over evil as day vanquishes night. I was terribly sleepy and cold - I hadn't taken any warm things with me. All through the night, I kept trying to contact my friends on the mobile, to ask how they were, but it was no use. Only an occasional SMS would get through with agonised questions no one could answer.

The shelling did not stop even when the first rays of sunlight penetrated the basement. Fighter planes started flying low over Tskhinval as if to show that we were all in their power. "A lull came shortly before dawn, and I left the basement for a nap. But as I was falling asleep I heard that the shelling got even worse.

My younger brother ran into my room and pushed me down to the floor. We heard plaster falling all over the house, and hurried back into the basement. "Time slowed down again. I was dazed with fright. I covered my ears with my hands not to hear the explosions and the aircraft roar, but it didn't help. I wept as I thought about my elder brother and my boyfriend, who were fighting together with the other men. I screamed as horror overcame me. "It got a little quieter at around lunchtime and I heard human voices. I stumbled toward the doorway and started listening. Suddenly, I was seized by panic - people were shouting in: 'Sakartvelo gaumarjos (Long live Georgia)!' There were also shouts in Russian: 'We won't hurt civilians!' I realised that Georgian troops had entered Tskhinval.

There was a skirmish as Ossetian militiamen vainly resisted the well-trained Georgian troops. "I was dazed all through the next hours in the basement, and sobbed all the time as I thought about all the young fighters and civilians who had died in the city. "Another lull came at 7 p.m. on August 8, and I decided to leave the basement. My neighbours also came out and stood horrified by the sight of what was left of our street. It was covered with shattered glass, shale fragments and shell splinters. We decided to get together - it felt safer to huddle together in the shelter. "I moved into a basement next door with a large family inside.

There were two young children with us. My neighbour's son-in-law, who serves in the peacekeeping force, came as we were making impromptu beds. He was shouting ecstatically: 'Victory! We drove Georgians off!' He embraced all of us in turn. "Another man who lives in our neighbourhood came. When Georgian troops entered the city they passed down his street, and he told us about atrocities perpetrated by these brave defenders of "free Georgia".

A soldier stuck a rifle barrel into the mouth of an old woman to stop her grumbling. When they asked a woman from the house across the street who was in the basement, she said there were women and children. At that, they threw two grenades into the basement without warning.

There were many horrors - we are learning the gory details only now. "The night was quiet but the shelling started again towards dawn. We heard an explosion in our street. We found out later that the roof of the house next door was smashed and there was a huge gaping hole in the wall of another house. We all thought things were about to go from bad to worse. "The fighting went on all through the morning. We learned how to tell Georgian volleys from peacekeepers' by the sound. In response to the peacekeepers' fire, Georgian Grads were firing on residential areas of Tskhinval. "Our food stock was running out but there was enough home-canned fruit in the cellar, so we could last on that. "Suddenly through the basement window I saw a pair of army boots crunching on broken glass. It was my boyfriend.

He gave me ten minutes to pack. He said a Georgian tank column was again storming the city and if I didn't get out of the city straight away he would forever blame himself for what would happen to me. "There were two vacant seats in his car, and I called the woman next door with a four-year-old son. When I was getting into the car, I saw her bringing another neighbour's two children. But there was no room for them. They were hysterical and scrambled into the car, crying and begging for help. "My boyfrend drove the car at top speed under fire. We made for the Zar Road, which links Tskhinval with Russia via the village of Dzhava.

The children were crying and praying. But just as we had left Tskhinval, near the village of Tbet, three South Ossetian soldiers stopped us and said they had just shot down a Georgian tank and another armoured vehicle, and Georgian infantry could arrive any minute. They told us to run into the field nearby and hide under a tree. We hid the car behind a shed. "As we ran through the field with three children, we got under fire. We fell to the ground and crawled to the nearest tree.

There was a hollow at its base, and all five of us huddled in it, terrified that the Georgians were going to find us there. Suddenly I saw that one of the girls was shivering from head to toe and muttering to herself. It broke my heart to look at the children. I knew the worst could happen to us right here, in this field. We could all be killed because someone saw defenceless women and children as their sworn enemies. "We heard the shelling of Tskhinval. Occasional splinters reached our tree. We covered our heads with our bags. Suddenly, one of the three Ossetian soldiers came running and said a peacekeeper tank column was going to pass soon, and we should follow by car to the Zar Road. "We saw several civilian cars speed past towards the road, but we did not budge, waiting for the tank column to pass. It's hard to say how long we lay in that field, but finally the tanks passed, and we ran to our car and drove off. "There were shot-down armoured vehicles all along the road, with charred bodies inside.

I was driving on automatically. "We saw several friendly troops close to the Zar Road, and asked whether we could go on. 'Yes, but keep your foot down, drive as fast as you can,' one replied. "The Zar Road, known as Rescue Route since the first war, of the 1990s, was a blood-curdling sight, with charred vehicles all along and the ground carpeted in shell splinters. We saw the civilian cars we had spotted while hiding in the field. The people were torn into pieces by a tank shell - and the Georgians who shot them could not have mistaken the cars for army vehicles. Fragmented bodies lay in pools of blood among scattered shoes and other belongings across the road. "The children in my car screamed at the sight. It took us another hour to reach Dzhava.

The village was crowded by refugees and motorised troops on their way to South Ossetia. Women, children and the old men who could not fight were hurriedly squeezing into buses and taxis to flee to North Ossetia. A peaceful mountain spa town, Dzhava was now an evacuation centre close to the combat area. "We knew our car would not last long after it was hit in Tskhinval at the very start of our flight. Two young men from North Ossetia gave us a lift to Vladikavkaz. One of them was talking nonstop. He said Ossetians and Georgians were all fools down to the last man - they couldn't see they were just puppets in a big political game.

He said it was time to bring sacrifice to the altars of war gods, and Heaven was taking people of all nationalities through trials and tribulations to reappraise their values and regain fear of God. "I did not listen to him - I was preoccupied thinking that my old life was gone forever, leaving me bitter memories, and it would be hard to start over."

Amiran Kabanov

"There were 350 houses in my village. Sixteen people have survived. Georgians did not warn us about the start of the military operation. About 400 Georgian soldiers entered the village. They broke into houses and searched them for weapons and military uniforms. 'Where are the militants?' they yelled. They thought there were more paramilitaries here than in Tskhinval. As things really were, there were only women, old people and children in the village. 'Why are you destroying our homes?' we asked them.

They snapped back that the state would restore the houses. "Georgians were planning to straddle the Zar Road and block the Roki Tunnel to cut off South Ossetia from Russia. "It's hard to say how many died. Many buried their relatives in their own yards. That was how a woman next door was buried. A shell splinter killed her in her own house (points at her yard). We have had seven funerals just now (on August 12, 2008). A woman was shot dead before my eyes. She was running after a chicken and a Georgian soldier shot her in the back. My neighbours buried her in her garden."

Nikolai Dzhussoyev

"This is my house (pointing at a two-storey building). There was no alarm. I spent the three days of shelling crouching in the basement. When I heard Georgian speech, I came out wearing a Labour Veteran medal I had been awarded in Tbilisi. I thought they would spare me when they saw it. "The things they were doing! Tanks and mortars shot at civilians point-blank. I'd shoot to kill the invaders if I had a gun! "I have been living here since the day I was born, and I shall never leave. I'll spend the winter in the basement."

Valentina Kochiyeva

"My son, some neighbours and me took refuge in the basement. There were eight of us all together. My son Vladislav Valiyev, a student from Stavropol, was in Tskhinval for summer practical training. "The cellar was too small to hold us all. We had no light, water, heating or toilet. The batteries on our mobile phones ran out soon, and we could not contact our friends and relatives. We had no idea what was going on.

We left at five in the morning on August 10 - the first quiet morning. We saw the dead lying in the streets. "We crammed into a car to leave, all the eight of us, and made for the village of Kusret, three kilometres from Tskhinval. I saw 17 burned out cars along the short stretch.

When we reached the village, I found out that my other son, who studies at a college in Zheleznovodsk, had volunteered for the army and left for Tskhinval. "The people next door, deaf-mute photographer Irakly Kozayev and his mother, were killed. Eka, Irakly's widow, a Georgian, is a refugee now."

Dmitry Bestayev

"It started around midnight on August 7. My wife and I had not gone to bed yet. There was shooting from all kinds of weapons. I had never heard such shooting before. Grads were firing, too. "A woman next door came running to our place. So there we were, the three of us. A guy from our village, Ibrahim Kisiev, was killed, and four people were wounded.

They all came to my home, and we dressed their wounds. The shelling went on day and night. "We all left our homes and livestock to flee into the woods on August 8. The shelling went on. We took Kisiev's body into our house during a lull that lasted for an hour or two. I ran to his place and asked if we could bury him. I was told that his son was also in the village and he was the one to arrange the funeral. I sent a boy to bring him, and we told him that his father was dead. We were talking about what the body should be wrapped in when my wife came running and yelling: 'They're firing again! I can't stand it!

Let's go back into the forest!' So we fled and those who stayed behind buried Ibrahim. Soon after the funeral, someone got me on the phone and told me to take the people out of the village in a column. Georgians had taken the village of Khelchua by that time. They broke into houses and ransacked them. They took money, jewels - everything valuable."

Valentina Valiyeva

"There were three of us at home - my son, my sister-in-law Tamara Mamieva, and me. "In the small hours of August 8, we heard an appalling blast. It was an artillery shell that broke a wall in my house.

The house caught fire in an instant. We were scared out of our wits and ran around, no idea what we should do. Tamara ran out, and met her death. The burning stair collapsed under her as she was getting down. We could not get her out - we did not dare even to reach the door with the cannonade. "Tamara taught Russian in a Georgian village school in the Soviet years. "There we were rushing around the house like mad. Another shell hit our house.

We froze on the spot with fright. Then we ran into the room farthest from the shell hole and got the television out of the corner to crouch there. We smelt the smoke only then, and realised that the house was on fire. Another shell flew over the house and hit our vineyard. Nothing was left of it. The craters were huge! We broke the window, jumped out barefoot and ran to the neighbours' cellar. My son lost his mobile phone, which he had been clutching. His ID and all our money turned into ashes with the house - Tamara's papers, too. We have nothing! Nothing at all! We couldn't take anything with us. "The neighbours who gave us shelter were also terrified. Then we left for another cellar. That was when I saw my home for the last time. It suddenly occurred to me that there was a compressed gas cylinder inside, and I screamed: 'Keep away, everyone!'

A shell hit a man next door, Mamiev by name, like Tamara, and smashed his skull. "I ran on like mad, and my son with me. We hid in the cellar of other neighbours, who had a car. I begged them to take us away to Dzhava. The man agreed. We spent a sleepless night in Dzhava.

My son said he would not go on to North Ossetia with his father staying behind in our village. "A bomber raided the road in the daytime, just when we decided to go to Vladikavkaz (weeps). It hit Russian troops quite close to us. Two tanks burned down. When we reached the tunnel, my son said again that he would not leave his father and our whole family behind in the village. So we just sat there. How could we leave Tamara's body unburied? But how could we go back? "As we found out later, Tamara's brother and Askhar Mamiev, a neighbour of ours - no relation, just of the same name, who were staying in Khetagurovo, our village, removed her body from the house.

It was all charred from the waist down. They wrapped the body in a sheet and put it down on a bench in the yard to bury her when the fire subsided. Her brother came back at night to bury her but the shelling got worse, and he barely managed to escape dashing from one ditch to another. "He left on foot across the forest the same night. Bullets were whizzing above his head all the time, he said later. He spent four days and nights in the Zar forest barefoot, and without a drop to eat or drink. A lorry driver gave him a lift after he reached Zar village. They stopped at the customs office (weeps). Someone gave him money to pay his fare. I was beside myself with joy when he reached us at last. We tried to contact our relatives (weeps).

They buried Tamara two days after she died. We came back today and sent our boys to the cemetery to dig a grave and rebury her properly, with a funeral service in keeping with our Ossetian customs. My mother was a refugee from the Borzhomi District. Georgians ousted her family in 1991. Georgians twice deprived us of our home and all the possessions we got over the years. "I hope the Lord never forgives Georgia. I hope it remains smeared with Ossetian blood for ever and ever.

I hope they experience the same sorrows that we did and understand how we feel. (weeps). We have eleven funerals in our village today - victims buried in their gardens are taken to the cemetery. Akhsar Tomayev, my pupil, will also be buried today. He was a nice boy. He and his friend were killed at the village entrance.

Georgians didn't care who they killed - men, women, old people or children. "Nastya Dzhioyeva, the motherin- law of a colleague of mine, refused to leave home, and was killed on the threshold. Old Yefim Bekoyev, our retired head teacher, was killed and his house was destroyed. I cannot remember all the victims just now, and I don't know who else died.

This is the first time I have come out since I returned. The street is all in ruins. Tanks shot at houses point-blank and drove over the ruins. They trampled my garden, too. "After all that, they got drunk celebrating, near poor Tamara's charred remains. The bastards. They are worse than the Nazis. If what they have done is not qualified as genocide, it will mean there are no more sane people left in the world."

Olga Atayeva

"My brother Alan Atayev, 37 years old, was a dentist at the city clinic. He had never served in the army. He was with my parents and sister in the basement of our house in the city centre during the bombardment of August 8. He left during a lull the next day to see who needed a doctor. We never saw him again. "My mother went out to look for him the morning after despite artillery fire.

She found his mutilated body 300 metres away from our home. Alan lay in fragments. They had shot him point-blank. It was a tank gun or some other heavy gun. My mother identified him by his shoes. She and my sister collected the remains and buried them in our garden under fire several hours later. They were not sure they would survive. The most important thing for them was to bury what was left of Alan."