05.04.2009 00:31 | Valieva Fatima Kazbekovna, born in 1969, resident of village Helchua, Tskhinvalski area of RSO

When all this horror began, we took cover in a basement of the house. We were going to rescue there. Now this house is completely destroyed too. People were fleeing wherever they could. The shells constantly landed here, maybe they did it with the express purpose, I don’t know. When we brought the wounded man here, one shell landed right next to us. It’s a miracle that we stayed alive.

We did not expect that such things could happen. I don’t know… They used here not the sub-machine guns only, but mortars and “Grad” rocket systems. Scorched earth and shell splinters are the evidences of it. If we knew, if we only expected, we would make ready and it wouldn’t happen.

Then Georgian soldiers entered the village, they posted sentries, forced the doors, they even took the foodstuffs away from the people, hidden in the basements. We ran for the forest, we were going to take cover there and they started shooting us in the back. There were bombing attacks of the Georgian airforce. We didn’t know what’s going on. There was such a heavy shelling – the road is riddled.  People ran down the road, now this road turned into the scorched earth, there is no one green leave on the trees.

Our neighbour Ibragim Kisiev was killed before my eyes. There was heavy shelling and we could not take his body home. When it became a bit calmer, we dragged him away from the road to the nearby house and left it there for a while. After a time, being under constant bombardment we have dug anyhow a grave for him in a kitchen garden of their house and transferred him there. We wrapped him in a cellophane film and buried. In thirteen days only his relatives managed to return to the village and buried him according to customs. There are two killed men in our village in all. Eight people were wounded; the elderly, women and nineteen-year-old girl are among them.

The Georgian soldiers beat everybody they catch. They carted him off to the next Georgian village…

Then, when we came back to the village, the guys brought the Georgian packed meal. They were probably American, there were foreign inscriptions on them.

During the war we thought all of us would die. We did not hope to survive. When Russians began to shell the enemy positions, we received a hope that everything would be all right.

I cannot understand what is this war in aid of? What did they tell us about? – They told that Georgians need us, they won’t do us any harm. This was a pure case of hype. It’s a fact. How can they say to people: “We love you, we want to live together with you” and do such things. I can’t imagine how it happened.

Translated by Tatiana Inozemtseva