Ethnic and nationalist tensions boiled over in South Ossetia in August, as Russia and Georgia fought for control of the separatist enclave. These coffins, containing the bodies of Georgian soldiers killed in the fighting, remained unburied for five days. When TIME photographer Yuri Kozyrev asked a local official why the coffins had not been interred, he was told that no digging equipment was available. Later in the day, he watched backhoes destroy homes that he was told belonged to ethnic Georgians.