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Irina Bibilova was on a night shift on August 8 when the Georgian forces launched a sudden, large-scale attack on the breakaway Republic of South Ossetia. Its capital Tskhinval immediately came under indiscriminate shelling, with a local psychiatric ward becoming one of the targets.

As the first explosions were heard, Irina and other medics decided to gather the patients on the first floor of the hospital. But they quickly realized that it wasn't safe there either and began evacuating the facility.

"Under the garage building [not far from the hospital] there was a trench to repair the cars. And they let us in and we stayed in that hole for 24 hours," Irina told RT's Ruptly video agency.
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Irina recalled that she and other nurses even tried to extinguish the flames, saying: "Despite the shelling, we managed to get three buckets of water there, but, of course, we couldn't save our hospital."

"But, thank God, we managed to save the patients," Irina recalled, barely able to hold back her tears.

Ten years after Georgia tried to seize the breakaway region of South Ossetia by force, RT spoke to survivors about how they have coped with the mental and physical scars suffered in those few days.

From a boy who was born to a cannonade of Georgian shelling in Tskhinval, to a nurse injured while trying to treat Russian peacekeepers besieged by Georgian troops, to a Florida man, whose Ossetian wife was caught in the crossfire - thousands of people were affected by the August 2008 war.

RT's documentary tells the stories of ordinary people, and of the burdens they have been carrying, in an attempt to answer a question: Can there be lasting peace on the war-scarred land of South Ossetia?

Arsen turned 10 on August 8. When he was born, his home city was under heavy shelling by the Georgian troops. Doctors were preparing to assist with the delivery in a basement, which offered some protection from incoming projectiles and debris.

"An ambulance came to take me to the hospital," recalled Arsen's mother Shorena Kachmazova. "There was heavy gunfire. When I reached the city, it was burned out and lay in ruins. There were burnt-out cars everywhere. That's how I got to the maternity hospital."

"We delivered him as the shells came down!" said Nellu Khugaeva, a nurse. "It was terrifying! We were shaking!"

Arsen said he was told a grenade blew up outside the hospital just as he was born.