Georgian villages are burning in South Ossetia (photo)

Tatyana Lokshina, Human Rights Watch expert, currently in South Ossetia: - Last night we tried to get to Tskhinvali from Vladikavkaz. There are huge traffic jams on the road due to military convoys and cars of civilians, which ...

Tatyana Lokshina, Human Rights Watch expert currently in South Ossetia:

• Last night we tried to get to Tskhinvali from Vladikavkaz. There are huge traffic jams on the road due to military convoys and cars of civilians who were returning to Tskhinvali. On the way from the regional center Java to Tskhinvali we passed four Georgian villages - Tamarasheni, Lower Achabeti, Upper Achabeti and Kekhvi. These are small ethnically Georgian villages on the territory of South Ossetia. When we were driving in the direction of Tskhinvali (it was about 18 hours), the houses were barely smoldering - they had been set on fire, and for a long time.

A curfew was beginning in Tskhinvali, and we decided to turn back. It was about 19:15 when we again drove past these villages and saw dozens of burning houses. They were set on fire during the hour and a half while we were driving to Tskhinvali. At the houses we saw Ossetian militias taking property out of the houses - furniture, carpets ... There were no residents in the villages - they left at the very beginning of the conflict. But there remained a few old people, infirm, sick, who could not leave. Their houses were burned, they were left in the ashes, they have no water.

We were talking to an old man whose house was burned down yesterday. Militiamen entered him, began to take some things. He began to object. And they set fire to his house. He tried to put out the fire with two plastic bottles of water. That's all the water he had. We also talked to a woman whose house was set on fire while we were driving to Tskhinvali. He says something was thrown out the window, and everything caught fire.

It seems to me that today, when the Russian authorities declare mourning for the victims of South Ossetia, these people are not remembered. And they are still there.

Arkady Babchenko, special correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, has just returned from South Ossetia:

• All Georgian villages around Tskhinvali are on fire. The Ossetian militias now have the euphoria of destruction. They take away everything they can carry, and what they cannot, they set fire to.