18.09.2008 13:43 | The Tragedy of South Ossetia. Testimony of Witnesses: Hubulov Sarmat Emzarovich

Hubulov Sarmat Emzarovich, born in 1990, painter

On August, 7, I’ve been in Tskhinval. There were 7 of us – me, my grandmother, grandfather, my aunt, two little sisters and the nephew. All of us have gone to sleep, because Saakashvili has told that there would be no shooting any more. We were sleeping when the explosions have suddenly begun. One of the fleeting shells hit our balcony. We ran to a basement straight away.

I took the documents and warm clothes. In two hours the shooting stopped, I have gone upstairs and went to bed. We really used to the fact, that the shooting usually quickly stops. I was sleeping, when they began to shoot from the “Grad " rocket systems. I returned to a cellar - for the whole 4 days. The

was burning. In the morning, about 9 o’clock the Georgian tanks have already entered the city. There were 4 tanks on our Tabolov Street, and they were shooting directly at our building. Well, while they were turning around, we thought that they were Russians and looked out of the basement. They have noticed us and began to shoot at the house. Then they got out of the tanks and opened the neighboring shop, cafe "Asel", got the beer, took the seats on the tanks and began to sing in a Georgian way. Then they have glanced in a cellar, but didn’t go downstairs and went away. And then people were talking (our neighbor Alexander is from The Heroes Street), that some of them spoke Ossetian, they said: "Don’t be afraid, we are Ossetians". There were women and children in the neighboring basement near a bakery. A woman from there looked out when she heard Ossetian speech; right at that moment they threw grenade in the basement. In the evening of the same day the car drove along our street, the father wanted to take his child away. For some reason they braked on the crossroads of Isak St.and Heroes St., and the tank has shot at them. And they knew that there was a child in the car. The neighbors have seen that, almost all the city knows about this occurrence. And else, I saw black men by my own eyes. That’s how it was: when it becamerelatively calm, I ran to my mother, who lived near the station. And then the shooting began again, and I had to stay there because the tanks already came nearer. Several servicemen, my friend, the neighbor and 4 other guys - we are all had been in a basement. When the tanks came nearer, my friend Slavik hit them from a grenade launcher, both of them! Two men got out of one tank; they were almost burning, and they ran into the house. When they saw us, they began to shoot. Our guys shot at them and killed them. My neighbor was wounded in the leg. Those killed men were Koreans. And one more fighter was sitting under the tank and shooting at us from there. Then my friend has shot from a grenade launcher again and killed him. And all of us have seen that it was the Negro. I saw him by my own eyes. The bodies have remained there. They were scorched not strongly, it was possible to define that it was Negro.

18.09.2008 08:36 | Three Days of Lolita Kabisova`s Life

When she reached Russian border with eight kids on her hands, she realized that God exists.

During three nights she was running to the Russian border together with the eight small children; her husband and two elder sons have remained in South Ossetia so that to protect their Republic.

Lolita and Aslan lived with their ten children rather poor, but in a friendly manner. For fun people called the Tebet`s residents “the mountain dwellers”, but there were not any mountains there. Tebet is almost the suburb of Tskhinval. The house with four and a half rooms in it became small, and they began to build near a new house, which would be more open-hearted so that everybody could have enough places there.

But they had time only to construct a big but strong basement. This basement has rescued all the family when the storm of a city began.

Aslan Sagkaev worked in the Migratory service, but he never thought, that he could become the compelled migrant by himself. Lolita Kabisova, having married, didn’t change her surname, though there wasn’t other such a close-knit family in the district. Lolita did not work anywhere and it was easy to guess why she didn’t, when you see her native children: Peter of 21, Vadik of 20, Sarmat of 17, Amina of 16, Valery of 15, Ilona of 14, Aslan of 10, Boris of 7, Soslan of 5 and little Linda of 8 months. The family cultivated maize and beans, reared hens, and ate these foodstuffs.

The elder sons choose man's profession: one of them served in OMON, another in SOBR. Their father steeped in a civil guardsmen’s line. And that’s why Lolita with her younger children only had been at home when the Georgian armies entered the city.