10.04.2009 23:23 | Tokaeva Elvira Georgievna, born in 1955, the resident of village Grom, Tskhinvalski area of RSO

In the morning of August, 8 about 05.10 a.m. a big explosion occurred. I already woke up. My mother-in-law is paralyzed, she also has a skin cancer and therefore can't sleep. I used to get up periodically at night to see her. That morning I looked out and suddenly such a shooting began, that my ears were blocked. I have hidden and when it became a bit calmer, I looked out of the window and saw our neighbours running somewhere. I asked them: “What’s happened?” The neigbour ran into and said: “What are you going to do? The war has begun! Georgians have stormed into the village!” I couldn’t leave my sick mother-in-law and save my own life by fleeing. She would die without nursing; there is nobody to give her a medicine, nobody to nurse.

And the residents of the village which is how got into the all cars they found in a village and drove away. Some people ran for the forest and hid there. All this time Georgians continued the bombardment of the village and the roads.

Suddenly our neighbour drove a car here and cried: “Elvira, why are you standing?! Georgians are already in the village! Some residents of the village are wounded. Rusiko, Hariton and some other men are wounded. We must run!” I said: “I cannot leave my mother-in-law. I can not flee.” Then he went away without us. We were alone in the village. I had been with my mother-in-law and my neigbour had been with her sick mum. They were so frightened of a morning cannonade they have hidden and everybody kept knocking in vain. Everybody thought they already left. In general, they moved to our place. We put the patients in a cellar. Though my mother-in-law cannot be moved categorically, we had to do it; in other case Georgians could enter and kill her.

From time to time there were the explosions and bursts of submachine-gun fire. I looked out of the window and saw hills occupied by Georgians. There were a lot of them… The hills were black from their military uniform. We were frightened, of course, we were frightened. In the afternoon a woman from the nearby village came to see us. She told crying that Georgians killed a young lad Anatoly Utarov before her eyes. We cried together too – he was a good chap. Then she went away.

So we spent that day. We took cover in a basement and knew nothing about my husband, children, relatives and the neighbours.

The heavy shelling started again. They occupied practically the whole village. They entered the houses and searched them.

The next morning I crept to a mountain spring, God be thanked, it was close with our house. On my way there I found the wounded woman in the house. It was impossible to move her. I came back, took the bandages. Then I went back. We dressed her wounds together with my neigbour. Then we returned to our patients. Much jewelry and other things vanished. Fortunately, they didn’t get round to us.

In general, we have gone through the second day too.

For the third day, when Russians have already entered Tskhinval and started to liberate Ossetia, we were still hiding. At night Georgians probably learned that Russian soldiers were going to this direction and having lost their things, the weapon and technics they left our village.

When everything was over, we have learned that there eleven dead men in the village and neighbouring places in all. Six men were wounded. Practically all of them are the elderly. Those people, who weren’t in condition to flee.

Translated by Tatiana Inozemtseva