20.02.2009 11:58 | She Became the Victim of the Terrible Shelling
 There are many sick old people, which had no time or were not in condition to cover in the shelters, among thousands of peaceful citizens, who became the victims of the terrible shelling of Tskhinval on August, 2008.
Kumaritova Tamara Tugievna, Tskhinval resident, was 85 years old when she died a dreadful death.
Tamara Kumaritova was born in Kohat village, area Tskhinval. For a long time she worked as a teacher in the secondary schools of the Republic. She lived in
, 183 in the nine-floor house with her son and his family.
As her son Hamlet Khubezhov tells, he and his mother had been in their flat on the seventh floor, when the night storm of Tskhinval began on August, 8th. Hamlet’s wife with two children came to her mother’s house in the other end of the city, so-called BAM district, after the night bombardment on August, 5th.of Tskhinval city from the site of the Georgian villages Nikozi and Ergnety, where the Georgian army’s firing positions had been located.
At night of August, 8th , when the massive shelling of the city from “Grad” rocket systems and heavy weaponry began, many people took cover in the basements, but my mother had got the sore legs and it was hard for her to go downstairs from the seventh floor - Hamlet says, - Our flat’s windows were aside Nikozy village, from where the Georgian soldiers opened heavy fire on the city. We moved to an empty neighbor’s apartment, its owners left me the keys before their departure. I thought we would be safe there”.
Periodically Hamlet went down on a ground floor where some of his neighbors took cover from the bombardments. He could learn any news there, because the electricity that fateful night had been cut off straight away. People received the news on mobile phones from their friends, native which had been outside the republic and had an opportunity to watch TV.
On daybreak, at about 6 a.m. several rockets hit our house and it was shaking so strong that it seemed the house would collapse. I realized that the shells hit the flats on the top floors, - Hamlet says.
When he went upstairs, being worried about his mother, he saw a terrible picture. Old Tamara, who has been covered with wounds by numerous splinters, with burns on a body, lay on a floor lifelessly.
Several rockets have destroyed all apartments from the fourth to the eighth floors; some of them have burnt down. Hamlet’s flat is completely destroyed too.
On August, 11 Tamara Kumaritova's mutilated body was buried in the ground on a cemetery in Tbet village. (On a photo: the House ¹183)
Sergey GAZZAEV
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