The corpses of Georgia’s killed soldiers were piled in the wood to cremate them.
Photo: Valery Melnikov
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In the Firing Atmosphere
// They’re gathering corpses in Tskhinvali
Regardless of the ceasefire agreement, which was yesterday signed by Mikhail Saakashvili, hostilities broke out anew in South Ossetia getting even more intense. The outskirts of Tskhinvali were fired at with heavy artillery and “Grad” missile systems. Simultaneously they buried those killed in the South Ossetian capital. The corpses of volunteers and natives were buried in the yards. Those of Georgia’s soldiers were burnt in bonfires. Olga Allenova reports from Tskhinvali.
“We’ll take the “200” away today”
You could hear the firing in the Tskhinvali area all night long. It seemed there were clashes close to the city. In the morning you could distinguish fighter jets in the sky. Shells fell somewhere close to us. Natives said those were the bombings of Transkam – the Georgian settlement seized by Russia’s troops the day before.
At 5 a.m. another group of those killed and wounded was brought to the hospital of Tskhinvali. 18 Russian military men were immediately taken to Java, where a military hospital transferred from Khankala was located.
The hospital had been machine-gunned on the first day of the war, and the staff had to move to the cellars. All rooms and corridors are used as operating-rooms. We walk on a thick layer of dust past beds put in rows, with lamps hardly giving any light. There is no electricity in Tskhinvali, but the doctors found a generator to boil their instruments at least. You can see blooded sheets near the walls. The operating-room is a dark hall with two tables in the center. In the room next door, there is a wounded volunteer, whose lung was injured. He’s just been operated on, and there’s a tube in his chest still. In the opposite room, there is wounded Izolda Gassiyeva. The woman is 63. She’s from the village of Tbet, which was one of the first seized by Georgia’s tanks.
“The tank drove along the street and fired at houses,” Izolda says. “One of the shells got in my house. The roof fell down, and the window glasses shattered.”
Despite her wound, Izolda refused to leave the city with a military convoy.
“Since the beginning of the war we’ve been occupied with military wounds and things like heart attacks,” the hospital’s chief doctor Nodar Kokoyev says. “Within three days we sent 160 injured people to Vladikavkaz.”
“Are there many those killed?”
“Yes, there are. We have three of them lying here, in the hospital. Those are Russian guys, soldiers. They were killed during the “Grad” shelling yesterday. Natives have already taken away their relatives, and buried them.”
The corpses of the three Russian soldiers lie in a former operating-room on the first floor. They were not taken to the cellars: they have nothing to fear anymore. The corpses are covered with white sheets.
A Russian officer enters the hospital. He asks the chief doctor whether he needs any help.
“We lack several medicines,” Mr Kokoyev says. “Our reserves are almost run out, and we can’t perform operations today. We didn’t expect it – a division entered the city, and the military hospital was left somewhere far from here. We know that it was moved to Java today. But it’s a pretty long distance still. We had enough medicines for the natives, but there are Russian soldiers here too.”
The officer promised to help with medicines supplies. When leaving, he said, “We’ll take the “200” away today.” According to the Russian Defense Ministry, 18 people from Russia’s Forces were killed and 52 – wounded. Another 14 people got lost.
Burial in the yard
Near the Alan hotel, there is a truck with mineral water brought from Vladikavkaz. Those who came here are truly brave – they ventured to leave their cellars to get a bottle of water. When they hear the sound of fighters’ engines, they rush to the hotel building and fall onto the ground. The jets drop their shells somewhere to the south of Tskhinvali and fly away to the north. They say it’s a battle for the Priss heights.
When leaving for their houses, women tell each other the latest news about their friends and relatives. In a house in Kvayssinskaya street, two corpses were found. The women were “covered” by a shell in the house. They have no heads, and it took long to find out who they were. Finally, it was done, and the women were buried in the yard.
“Why in the yard?” I ask.
“Where else?” they reply. “You can barely go to the cemetery – there’s the firing there. You can’t keep the corpses at home – you never know what’ll happen in an hour. Perhaps, we’ll be killed too.”
With the bottles of water handed out, the soldiers help women and old people get into the empty truck, which is leaving for Vladikavkaz. It’s the only opportunity for the local population to get out of the city. Two soldiers help a woman in a wheel-chair. “Guys, I can’t take such old people,” the driver says in a whisper. “They won’t endure it. The road is full of military machines. It’s hot and dusty, they won’t bear it.” But the woman in the wheel-chair refuses to stay in Tskhinvali any longer. “I can’t live here!” she cries, “They’ll come back again!” An hour later the truck stuck up with refugees leaves for North Ossetia.
In Lenin street a Zhiguli car stops next to us. A volunteer with a gun waves at us, “Get into the car, I’ll show you something.” Beslan Sanakoyev takes us along Lenin street, which is flooded, past Georgia’s burnt tanks. You can see corpses of Georgian soldiers. “They are from those tanks,” Beslan says. “They got out of them and were shot.” We drive to a wood in the south of the city. I finally see the end of our trip. The wood is full of Georgian soldiers’ corpses. Someone has burnt one of them, and you can see only legs and arms in the bonfire.
“Should we bury them?” the volunteer says. “No one will dig a pitch for them. They didn’t care bout us. Why should we care about them? I know, it’s not in the Orthodox manner, and did they treat us in the Orthodox manner? Why doesn’t Saakashvili take them?”
We return to Lenin street, and drive to Oktyabrskaya street. Here we see the first true burial ceremony. Volunteer Victor Tadtayev, 22, is buried here. Women are silent.
The young man’s friends come – in camouflage and with guns. They hug Victor’s old father Murat, who wipes away tears.
“The flat has been bombed and destroyed completely,” he utters. “I can’t even take him home. We have to bury him in the garage.”
Victor was Murat’s younger son. He fired at the tanks that now stand in Lenin street. Perhaps, he was killed by one of those soldiers whose corpses are now in this street.
The volunteers that stand at the garage say they’ll never forgive the Georgians. “They have plagued us so long!” Murat says. “When will it stop?”
Victor’s friends say that in the evening Russia’s military prohibited Ossetian units to participate in the operation in Georgia’s enclave Transkam.
“There are so many military machines and soldiers there. The whole Georgia is there. They are afraid to lose the enclave,” Valery, one of the soldiers, says.
“They’re doing the right thing – you shouldn’t go there,” a woman in a blue coat replies. “You’ll make mistakes there, and then you’ll be ashamed.”
“Ashamed of what?” one of the soldiers Alik answers back. “I didn’t attack them! They fired at your house three days, and you feel sorry for them?”
“They are not all bad,” the woman says in a calm voice. But no one hears her.
“They have lost Ossetia for ever”
There is a nursing home in the eastern part of the city, which was yesterday seized by Russia’s troops. There are so many armored machines in the area that you can barely get to the building. We walk past the yard of school 12, where we can see a lot of corpses of Georgian soldiers. An old man sits on a bench in front of the nursing home eating a plum. He picked it from the tree, whose top was cut by a shell. Taimuraz Atayev smiles with his toothless mouth and shakes my hand.
“I sit here, watch the Russian tanks, and I rejoice,” he says. “And here you come! Thanks for being with us now. I thought the Russians left us. The firing and bombing lasted for two days here.”
Taimuraz is 65. He had lived all his life in the village of Didmukha before his brother brought him to the nursing home. Taimuraz has problems with his legs, and such people have nothing to do in the village. Now Didmukha is in ruins, and Taimuraz doesn’t know what happened with his brother – no one knows who controls Ossetian settlements.
“We’re nine here,” Taimuraz says. “There’s no cellar here. When they started shooting, we hid in the foyer. We spent two days on the floor.”
Taimuraz cries.
There is no food and water here, like in the rest of the city. The humanitarian aid, which Russia sent to Tskhinvali, stuck somewhere in Java – the road was machine-gunned yesterday. The citizens got the aid in the evening only.
We share an apple and packed lunch with him, which volunteer Beslan Sanakoyev gave us.
Taimuraz cries again.
His friend Alexei Kokoyev comes out of the building. He accompanies me as we walk along the corridors of the nursing home, which are covered with broken glass and plaster. In the foyer two men peal potatoes. “Our director has just been there. He brought the potatoes,” Alexei says. “He’s fighting, he was unable to come here yesterday.”
Alexei takes us to his room to show us his bed, which was shot through. There is his neighbor Kaurbek, 74, in the room. The man is in a wheel-chair. During the war at the beginning of the 1990-s Kaurbek lost his three sons. His wife died – she could not bear the loss. To survive, the man had to move to the nursing home.
“I participated in the Hungarian campaign,” Kaurbek says. “I’ve never been afraid of anything. And now I feel fear.”
Alexei says that on August 8 ten Georgian soldiers appeared in the nursing home. “They entered the foyer and pointed their guns at us,” Alexei remembers. “Then Kaurbek lifted his hands up and said, “You can shoot, we’ve been dead for a long time!” They were confused and hid their guns. They asked us where the school was and went out. They are all dead now. There they are, beside the school. I guess, they were shot down as soon as they went out.”
“I understand I should not blame them all,” he says. “But why did they come here? Didn’t they know that only civilian population lives here? We haven’t done anything wrong to them, why should they come here with all their guns? Now they have lost Ossetia forever.”
In the evening we learnt that Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili signed a ceasefire decree. However, the firing didn’t stop. You could see fighter jets and helicopters in the sky. You could hear the sound of firing and shelling. The natives had to hide in the cellars. According to Ossetia’s military, the battle for the key heights was going on.
Olga Allenova
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 12, 2008
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