South Ossetia mourns victims of Georgian aggression in 2008

TSKHINVAL (Itar-Tass) - Three years after the Georgian
aggression in August 2008, South Ossetia is mourning its victims overnight
to Monday. An action in their memory started at 23:35 on Sunday, the exact
time when Georgia's shelling of the city began.
People have gathered on a square in front of the Church of the
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin in Tskhinval, with burning candles in their
hands.
"The time to attack South Ossetia was chosen deliberately," South
Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity said at the mourning ceremony. "The war
was unleashed on the day when the world was celebrating a global sports
festival, the Olympic Games. And two hours before the shelling, Georgian
peacekeepers and members of the OSCE mission fled the city."
"First Georgian shells killed many civilians. Then, for the next three
day, South Ossetian soldiers deterred the enemy forces until Russian
troops came to help," the South Ossetian president said. "Tskhinval was a
Caucasian Stalingrad. The forces were unequal and only thanks to the
actions of Russia the bloodshed was stopped."
Later in the day, a monument to a Russian soldier, Hero of Russia
Denis Vetchinov, will be unveiled in a Tskhinval suburb where he died on August 9, 2008.