Khabalov Vladimir Dmitrievich, 1952 d.b., an inhabitant of Tskhinval
I live in the northern outskirts of Tskhinval. At night from seventh to eighth of August 2008 about 12 o’clock a missile burst next to our house. The light was switched off; the windows were knocked out by the explosive wave.
I was sleeping that time yet. We had gone to bed before not expecting, that there would be any shooting that night. Because that day the georgian president, had a speech over the television set, where he said that there would not be any war and that he was ready for negotiations with South Ossetia. And the same night the georgians dishonestly assaulted the sleeping people. Together with my wife I run quickly and came down into the cellar, half-dressed, in slippers. We have no time to take anything with us. We had neither meal, nor water, five awful days we spent in full isolation from the world. I have three sons. Two of them were at the post; the third took his wife and children in Vladikavkaz. My neighbour Vilen Kelekhsaev, run up to us and asked to turn off the mobile phones, because the georgians had been monitoring the signal and bombing the crowded places. I am the first group invalid , I had much problems with my eyes, I was also suffering for my sons, for the fate of our population, so my blood pressure raised , and it nearly killed me. When I was younger, I, either as my children at present, was on guard of our Native land. In 90-th of XX-th century, when the georgians undertook the attempt of conquering our Republic, I took the gun, and in 2004 I was struggling under the command of Vladimir Kelekhsaev. In 2008 perished my neighbour, a young girl Lida Kokoeva, she was suffocated with charcoal fumes – her house was burned by the hit of the georgian projectile. A lot of people had suffered from that bloody war. One could not express the happiness, we felt when in August 2008 the Russian army came and rescue us. Thank them for this action.
