09.11.2008 18:11 | Hope did not leave us

Our people endured so much grief and suffering during 18 years, but the August events became the most tragic for us. I’ll never forget those several long and terrible days, which I spent together with my neighbors in a dump, dark basement. Shaking with each explosion and being frightened for a life of the children, parents pressed them to themselves more closely. There were no tears; there were no also children's whims as if they realized the all seriousness of the situation. We were hungry and without water, our forces became more and more depleted, but hope did not leave all of us, we believed in the help of Russian peacemakers.

Several days before those tragic events, the neighbor wanted to send her young pregnant daughter-in-law Tina Kabisova to Northern Ossetia. But so far as she did not have a passport, she could not leave. And, unfortunately, she had to be together with us in a cellar too.

- If the labour pains begin suddenly, I ask you, please, stay near with my daughter-in-law. So I’ll feel calmer, - Tina`s mother-in-law told me. It was difficult to me to imagine myself in a role of a mid-wife. I was so confused at that moment that forgot for a while about shelling and about my daughters, who were with me in a cellar. They began to worry about Tina too. I was disturbed by only one thing: how could we cope with such a difficult problem for us.

- Don’t be afraid, shooting will calm down and you’ll have time to leave to Northern Ossetia, and she still keeps her head, - I was calming my neighbor down. And I prayed: "My God, let this nightmare finish soon".

06.11.2008 11:40 | They hurried to help hostages

The Tadtaev`s family – husband and wife Raisa and Meliton, which live on October Street, 139, suffered a hard loss. One of their two sons - the junior 22-year-old Victor, the employee of the Ministry of Defense of South Ossetia, died as a hero, trying to help hostages.

On August, 9 when the Georgian bands entered Tskhinval again, the fierce fights began in the district of school №12. The tens of Georgian bloodsuckers have located in one part of the two-storied inhabited building, which tenants were hiding in the shared basement. Some more Georgian snipers were situated comfortably at school №12. “When they found out that we were hidden in a cellar, about 15 armed to the teeth Georgians came to us and demanded from us to leave a cellar with the hands in the air. Several other Georgians had been in our houses, - Helen Kachmazova, one of the residents of the house, occupied by Georgians, says. – There were about 8 people in the cellar; four of them were men in pension and a prepension age. I came out to them together with the other woman. We began to plead with them in Georgian language not to kill us. They said that soon the car would come to fetch us to Georgia. At that time one our neighbor Vilen Chibirov was coming home, when he saw Georgians in his house it was too late, they shot him at point-blank range before our eyes. Then our civil guardsmen hurried to help us and began to fight with them.

The Georgians, who have called us from a cellar, took cover in the house too and therefrom were shooting, and we rushed to a cellar again. We were not afraid for ourselves any more, we were afraid for our children; there was my son also among them. All the time we prayed for them.

11.10.2008 08:53 | OSSETIAN TRUTH IS HARD TO SWALLOW

Ossetian truth about three genocides, organized by Georgians towards South Ossetians is hard to swallow for Bush’s administration and the others. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to rewrite the history.

Kahetian Ossetians are the special pages of this history.

Mzia Hubulova, born in 1972, tells:

- I have left Kahetia in 1989. Our village in Kahetia was purely Ossetian. There were not less than 16 purely Ossetian villages in Ahmedsky district of Georgia. It is already closer to gorge Pankisskoje.

That year I graduated from a secondary school and my parents sent me to study in Vladikavkaz, to Northern Ossetia. That time Gamsahurdia`s fascist slogans: “Georgia for Georgians”, “Ossetians are garbage, get out away from here” and so on openly sounded everywhere. In Tbilisi people supported Gamsahurdia, but people in remote places didn’t. And then in this fascist surge they invaded in Tskhinval.

I want to emphasize, that Kahetian Georgians were then against those who came from Tbilisi. They did not want war, they wanted the peace. The war is not necessary to ordinary people. For a shot time Kahetian Georgians from the next villages managed to resist the emissaries from Tbilisi. That’s why my parents still hoped that everything would be turned out somehow. They did not want to go away from Kahetia, to leave their house-keeping, the manor house, the vineyard... The grandfather together with the grandmother especially wanted to hear nothing about any departure. But the situation became worse and worse. As a result, gradually, within several years, everyone had to move here, to Northern Ossetia.

08.10.2008 17:20 | A Book-Album "South Ossetia. Chronicle of Contract Killings" Came Out

05.10.2008 12:44 | Testimony of Witnesses: Bestaeva Marina Nikolaevna, 63 years old, Tbet village

We did not want to believe that some villages of our district are already occupied by the Georgian soldiers. Notwithstanding the fact we lived in a constant anticipation of war, people thought everything would get by with the night shelling again. But when on the night of August, 8, the terrible bombardment began, everybody realized, that the most awful thing has happened. At 4 a.m. the neighbor came and shouted that Georgian tanks have surrounded the neighboring village Khetagurovo and were going to our direction.  We wanted to leave to Vladikavkaz together with my 73-year-old husband, little granddaughters of 4 and 7 years old and my daughter-in-law. We got in the car, but didn`t manage to pass even hundred meters when two rockets have fallen in front of us. We and some other women from Tskhinval took cover in a basement of the two-storey building, where the other people were already hidden. Georgians have already been in village. Probably, when they noticed the movement of people they surrounded the building (it`s situated at the road to Tskhinval) and began to sing the songs, shouted: “guamarjos Sakartvelo “, that means “Long live Georgia”, and shouted us: “Get out!”

Children are crying, we are, the women, are crying. There is a roar in the basement. Then I thought: “It`s the end”. There were civil guardsmen, standing in a passage of a cellar. They had got the submachine-guns only. What could they do contrary to the tanks! Georgians looked in a window and shouted “Get out!” The children have climbed in old boxes. At last, civil guardsmen managed to run out from a door of an entrance in the other hand (not where the Georgian tanks had been).

04.10.2008 12:53 | The Action “Ossetia Accuses” took place in Evian

The representatives of Ossetian Diasporas from the different countries of the Europe took part in this action.

They have gathered in France to tell the truth about the tragedy of Tskhinval and in order to draw the summit participant’s attention to the crimes of Georgian management.

Such the actions, organized by the active workers of National Forum of South Ossetia already took place in Vladikavkaz, Moscow and Strasbourg.

Their participants called on the world community to condemn the aggressive actions of Georgia and to recognize the right of South Ossetia of self-determination.

“The First Channel”

04.10.2008 12:16 | The Action “Ossetia Accuses” Started in Tskhinval

People came in their tens to the central square of the city in order to accuse publicly Georgia and its president in war crimes. The gathered people also condemned the authorities of the USA and a management of NATO for their support of Saakashvili`s regime.

Within limits of the action, organized by a national forum of South Ossetia, the whole series of meetings is planned. They will take place within the next few days in Vladikavkaz, Moscow and Strasbourg.

The active workers of the national forum of South Ossetia are going to hold three demonstrations in front of headquarters of the Council of Europe where the regular session of PACE will take place a next week. They are going to call on the world community to admit the fact of a genocide of Ossetian people and to prosecute Michael Saakashvili.

28.09.2008 08:10 | Tshinval tragedy: eyewitness testimonies

South Ossetians who survived the bombing in August, 2008 will never forget the terrible days they had to go through. And the children who saw the death of their loved ones will not remain children, they were forced to grow up too quickly.

Liana Zasseeva, 47 years old, tskhinval resident

Our house was located on the southern outskirts of the city, almost on the border. On August 7, in the evening everybody who lived in the house gathered in the basement.  The elderly, women and children, they were all there. We had to put chairs in the passage as seventeen people were sitting there. Some have already spent four days in the basement.

There was a terrible bombing during the night. The morning was a bit calmer so some went into the yard to see what had happened to their flats. There,  the barn was hit by a sell and caught fire, which could spill over to the building. We began to extinguish it. The entire south wall of our house was destroyed.

After 9 pm the shelling resumed and we returned to the basement. At 10-15 one of our neighbors looked out through a crack in the basement and said that there tanks with writing in Georgian on them follow by infantry all dressed in black - apparently, Special Forces. We heard Georgian speech.

The first Georgian column was passing near us until 2 am. They moved towards the centre of Tskhinval. The tanks at the streets turned around and fired at apartment blocks. The neighbor looked outside again and saw that a large number of Georgian troops had gathered near the Home for the Disabled. Then they started to search the flats.

In the nearby house an old man lived. His name was Kabulov and he was 70. The Georgian troops broke into his flat. A man for our basement went out and asked the Georgian troops not to kill Kabulov. But a Georgian soldier said that it was too late. The old man was already dead – killed after a tank fired at the building.

Larisa Gabueva, 40 years old, Tskhinval resident

On August 8, at 11-30 pm the shelling of the city with heavy weaponry began. My body is shaking when I recall these events. We thoughts it was going to be O.K. We were told that South Ossetia can cope with the aggression on its own. But we were not ready for such type of war, any Tskhinval resident will tell you this. We could not imagine that they would aim at peaceful citizens.

The shelling went on and on. It got quiet only in the morning and every body went out of the shelter to grab food, water and blankets. But then everything repeated. The massive shelling began again, and Grad " rocket systems were used. We saw how the sells hit the nearby buildings, where our neighbours – Murat Byazarov and Lerika Tedeeva – lived. After a strike by “Grad” the house burned to the ground in 20 minutes. We could not help them with buckets and rockets were flying in the air.  Besides, we had no water to put out the fire. There was no water in the city. Even drinking water.

I’ve been to the burial of Kachmazov sisters. They had no basement and they were hiding on the first floor. Then a rocket hit their house and they were burnt alive. The people of Tskhinval were not ready for this war. We were left completely alone. It seems we like we were sacrificed.

25.09.2008 16:00 | IT WAS A NICE BLOOMING SITY

24.09.2008 19:53 | Algis Mikulskis: They burned some people even without killing them first

At the entrance to Dzhava we stopped near a small shop. Then a plane arrived. The assault plane Su-25. The bomb dropped about 50 meters from the cameraman Zhora (Georgi L'vov, the second operator of the channel “Zvezda”, from Moscow. - Red.), and a huge stone fraction  flew into his back. They thought, his kidney was ripped off. But he turned out to be lucky. Only his back would still be black in color for a long time...

…In Tskhinval, after the artillery preparation, Georgian infantry and tanks have appeared... It looked as if they had an order to destroy everyone who managed to survive the shelling. In city morgue a young woman was lying since the 11^th, pressing her baby to her chest. Both were killed by a single round. Our colleagues saw beheaded family 1.5 babies burnt alive...  Many Georgians knew well the Ossetian language. They were the ones who knocked on the basement doors under the guise of being “Ossetians””. And when people opened their basements-they threw grenades in there... The wounded, including our peacekeepers, were finished off. They burned some people even without killing them first. Refugees who were trying to escape on the only road to Roki pass with a tunnel, were exterminated from the planes...»

 One more eye-witness of the war in South Ossetia is a TV cameraman Algis Mikulskis working in Moscow for the channel “Zvezda”, - told about what he has seen in his Internet-diary.