Additional Info
Zar Road Stories
KILLED ON ZAR ROAD
Names of deceased: Taimuraz Tedeev, Babutsa Tedeeva
Place of residence: Tskhinval
Told by Marina Dzagoeva:
"I was at home on 7 August when at approximately 23:30, the bombardment of the town started. Our family went down to the basement. There were about 20 people in the basement and we hid from the shelling until morning. On 8 August, after the shelling stopped, we decided to leave. I, my two sons. Atsamaz Tedeev, 22, and Taimuraz Tedeev and my mother-in-law Babutsa Tedeeva, 75, left for Vladikavkaz along Zar Road. At about 7 o'clock, we left Tskhinval and reached the village of Tbet where we saw infantry and tanks moving towards our direction. We thought they were Russian troops.
"My son, Atsamaz, stopped the car and got out to tell those approaching us that we were heading for Vladikavkaz. As soon as he got out of the car, a Georgian soldier fired at his legs. Atsamaz fell down. Taimuraz, my other son, jumped out of the car to help his brother. He was also wounded. The Georgian soldiers came closer to the car and fired one shot to the head of my mother-in-law, Babutsa Tedeeva. She died at once. Then they grabbed Taimuraz and took him to the center of the road and said they would run over him with a tank. I kneeled down and begged them not to do it. They said they were taking us as hostages and were waiting for a car. Suddenly, they left and hurried to town.
"Taimuraz, who was heavily wounded, somehow drove the car and took us to the village of Zar. We were provided first aid and then taken to the village of Zar. From there, he was transported to Alagir hospital, where doctors did their best to stop bleeding. On 9 August, his birthday, he died. We buried him in the village of Kambeleevka, Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. Atsamaz was taken to Moscow hospital for treatment. My mother-in-law's body remained on the road for two days. She was then taken to Tskhinval mortuary and the doctors buried her on the hospital grounds. Her daughter re-buried her in the village of Kambeleevka, next to her grandson."
Names of deceased: Ruten Kozaev, Elbrus Kozaev and Vladimir Tedeev
Place of residence: Tskhinval
Told by Svetlana Guchmazova, a neighbor:
"On the first night, when the town was shelled by all types of heavy weapons, we all hid in the cellar of our neighbor's house, which seemed to us the safest place. We hoped it could withstand the aerial bombardment by Georgian planes. Heavy blasts were heard all the night. In the morning of 8 August it became relatively calm. Elbrus and his neighbor Vladimir decided to take his father Ruten and his sister Milena Kozaeva toVladikavkaz in his car. How could we know that it was the last time that we would see our neighbors?
"Milena was the only one who survived from that car. She says that right after they left Tskhinval the segment of Zar Road they were traveling came under heavy fire. "My father was behind the wheel and he was wounded shortly after the shelling started," Milena Kozaeva said. "He lost orientation. After a minute or two we felt an explosion; the car was turned upside down but the Georgian soldiers continued to fire. I found myself thrown out of the car. It saved my life as within seconds the car was on fire. Because of endless firing the bodies remained in the car until 10 August. Later Ruten was identified according to the knife which was found under the remnants of his body. Elbrus was identified by his wrist watch and Vladimir from what was left from his clothes. On 11 August they were buried in Zguder cemetery."
Name of deceased: Rusudan Petoeva
"On the 9 August, we decided to leave Tskhinval for Vladikavkaz. We started about 10 o'clock in the evening and headed towards Zar road. We passed Tbet village and were on Zar Road when our car was attacked by heavy shelling. When we stopped the car, we found that my wife, Rusudan, was dead. The car was under constant fire. My son and I wanted to get out but we could not for about 40 minutes. When we got out of our car, we crawled away. I realized that I was wounded in the leg. My son and I bandaged my leg. We were creeping along when my son said someone was following us. We kept on crawling. About 20 minutes later, I realized that my son was not next to me. We had lost each other. I called him on the phone but it was switched off. I waited for some time and then decided to continue on my way. The whole time I heard horrible sounds of shelling from all types of weapons. I came across someone else and asked for help. I kept calling my son and, finally, about dawn, he answered me. He said he had lost his way and was somewhere in the forest. We turned back and found him. He was wounded in the shoulder and the head. He said he had been followed by a Georgian soldier who shot him. My son fell down and pretended that he was dead. My son made certain that the Georgian soldier left and then hid away in the forest. We were taken to the village of Dzau and received first aid and then were transported to Vladikavkaz for treatment. Our relatives buried my wife in Tskhinval."
Names of deceased: Fenya Ilyinichna Kozayeva (Age: 84), Nikolay Vasilyevich Vaneyev (Age: 79)
Told by daughter, Varzenika Nikolaevna Vaneyeva :
"My uncle with his wife, my daughter and my parents left the village. I stayed here, I can't explain why. When they were on Zar Road they came under fire. The younger ones managed to jump out of the car and hide, but my parents were killed. The children managed to get to Dzhava and from there to Vladikavkaz.
For several days the dead bodies lay in the road and nobody could identify them. Then the bodies were brought here and were identified. We somehow managed to bury them without a funeral repast, without anything. There were several men in the village that helped us dig out the graves."
SURVIVORS OF ZAR ROAD
Name: Maguli Omarovna Siukaeva (Age: 39)
"On 7 August, when the Georgians started shooting, we hid in the cellar with the children. We spent the whole night there and in the morning of 8 August, we ran to the village hospital. We didn't know that the hospital was subject to a heavy shelling from all sides. On the way there we came under fire, but we couldn't go back. Under the heavy fire we still somehow managed to get to the hospital cellar. We were not safe there as well, so we decided to leave the village.
There were no cars, but there was a bus, where we put the children, elderly people and women and set off. We knew by then that Tskhinval was occupied by Georgians, but we didn't know that the Zar Road was also under fire. Regardless we did not have a choice. We went on Zar Road. The road was under heavy fire. One of the shells fell next to the bus and it turned over. It was horrible. I clasped the children to my bosom, but what was going on all around was a nightmare. Many of us were wounded as a result - some had an arm broken, some had broken legs. The driver broke the front window and we got outside through the window. The children had blood all over. One of the boys had a broken arm, one girl had her hip badly cut. The women and children were left in the middle of the road. All the rest went forth. Some military men were driving by, we had a two-months-old child, I cried out to them: "Help us!" They told us not to be afraid. I left the children there and climbed back to the bus, where I had left my two-month-old child. Gradually people went ahead, and we were left only seven children and ten women. Then the soldiers put the bus upright and on that broken bus we somehow got to Dzhava.
My husband stayed in Tskhinval. I did not even know, if we would ever see each other again. I came back to Tskhinval with the children on August 29th, when my brother brought me there. My house was partially destroyed. Thanks to God, nobody of my close relatives suffered. Now, recalling everything, I realize that our survival was a miracle."
Name: Marina Kochieva (Age: 40)
"On 9 August, after several days of shelling of Tskhinval, I and my relatives and neighbor decided to leave for the village of Dzau as it was safer there. We left Tskhinval in three cars and reached Zar Road, approximately 150-200 meters from Tbet Road, when we came under heavy shelling from a Georgian armored troop carrier. My car veered off the road. As it was damaged we jumped out of it. I and my neighbor rolled down into a ditch. My neighbor covered me with his body and shortly after this was wounded in his left leg. We saw that my car was burning. My identification document, clothes, money and other personal things were left in the car. We spent the whole night from 9 to 10 August in the ditch as we were constantly fired at and we could not run away from that place. At about 6 o'clock in the morning we saw a mini-bus coming along the road. We stopped the mini-bus which was transporting wounded inhabitants of Tskhinval to the village of Dzau. From Dzau we were taken to the North Ossetian Republican Hospital in Valdikavkaz."
Name: Mziya Kachmazova (Age: 45)
"As you know, the shooting and shelling of South Ossetia had been going on for about a week before 7 August. But there had been breaks in the shooting. They stopped and then resumed.
On the evening of the 7th, Saakashvili spoke on TV and said that the Georgians would not fire a single shot from their direction, and that everything would be all right from now on. We rejoiced. We sat outside, my neighbors and I, and we really were happy and cheerful. We thought at last that was the end to it. We were happy that we would be able to sleep in our beds normally, without fear. So we went home and went to our beds, sure that everything was going to be fine.
"Sometime around midnight, heavy shelling started. I ran to my daughter Susanna and got her out of bed. I took some medicines and we hurried to the basement. Usually the shooting would start with machine-gun or automatic weapons fire, but this time they started with heavy weapons.
"The neighbors also started running down to the basement, hurrying each other along. The neighbors said that this time it was going to be really serious, that it was going to last longer, because the Georgians had brought great forces. So we were sitting in the basement, and the shelling was endless, the shooting…well, I don't know how to explain it. I watched a lot of movies about wars, but this noise that we were hearing, these booming sounds - I had never heard anything remotely like them before. We could feel our many-story houses move and shake; we were afraid that they would collapse and we would be buried under them. The whole night we suffered like that, in fear, in expectation of death, drinking medicine drops, because many of us were bad from time to time. Till morning we endured all this.
"A young man from our neighborhood was with us, and he had a radio. And when we heard on the radio that they were already all around, that they had captured almost the half of the town, we started considering our escape, because we knew that they would kill us all if they reached us. We wanted to escape while the Zar Road was still open, to the north. So in the early morning my neighbors set out in two cars, and my daughter and I went with them. In the empty streets not a living soul or vehicle was moving. Houses were burning, trees broken down, roads damaged. We were driving as fast as we could, almost flying.
"As soon as we got out of the town to Tbet (a village near the Zar Road) we saw quite a column of troops, with armored troop carriers, tanks, and soldiers; at first we thought that they were our troops, and the men jumped out of the cars. But then we heard them speaking Georgian, and they immediately started firing at us. Our driver was killed on the spot. In the other car an old woman was also immediately killed, her skull was partially blown away. We all were wounded, but we somehow managed to get out of the cars and hide behind them.
"We were bleeding. We implored them not to kill us. We told them that we were not guilty of anything, that we were just ordinary people who hadn't done any wrong to them. We reminded them of their own families, children, brothers, sisters, we kept imploring them not to kill us. So we stayed there until they all passed by, about 400-500 soldiers, with different vehicles, armored troop carriers, tanks, military cars of American make.
"Meanwhile another one of the passengers of our cars died, a young boy who bled to death. In total three people died. We all were bleeding. We managed to get to our side with help from some people who were also traveling to the Zar road. They put us on their car and took us with them. On the Zar road we met some other Ossetians. There was one surgeon and a nurse. They bandaged us and helped us to get to Dzhava and from there to Vladikavkaz.
"It's very difficult to convey in words all the horrors we saw there. We still have not recovered after all that."
Place of residence: Tskhinval
Place of residence: Bekmar Village
Place of residence: Znaur Village
Place of residence: Tskhinval
Residence: Tskhinval
