Residents of Tskhinvali capture apartments in blocks under construction

The Tskhinvali residents in need of better housing conditions have squattered apartments in newly built houses that are almost ready for commissioning. They explained their actions by intolerable conditions in which they have lived until recently.

The captured houses are located in the so-called "Jewish District" of Tskhinvali, which gets its name from the fact that 20 years ago it was inhabited by members of the Jewish and Armenian communities. At the beginning of the 1989 Georgian-Ossetian conflict, the non-Ossetian residents of the district left the republic; and their houses acquired the emergency state with time.

Close to the dilapidated houses, builders have erected new two-story ones. So far, nobody has moved in; while the people who talk about their troubles are not the owners of these houses, but try to become them.

"We came to these houses on Saturday, March 16. People from the government came to visit us; they didn't expel us, but didn't sanction our accommodation either," said a resident of Tskhinvali named Aslan.

His neighbour said that he had lived in the same conditions. "We have our families with my brother; two children in each. My wife is pregnant with the third one. Our parents live with us – 10 people in three rooms," he said.

Leonid Tibilov, President of the Republic, said that the people who moved into the houses in the "Jewish District" are not their owners.