Prague/Tbilisi - Two Czech journalists working for the weekly magazine Reflex Tomáš Tesař a Marek Hudema together with a cameraman and reporter Ondřej Pořízek were attacked and robbed on Tuesday evening by unknown gunmen in Georgia.

All Czech journalists that are covering the current situation in Southern Ossetia are doing well and were not hurt. Russians brought them to the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

"I have lost all my cameras, lenses, money and documents," said one of the journalists Tomáš Tesař who is a photographer with Reflex to Aktuálně.cz.

A.cz: Are you safe right now?

Yes, we are in Tbilisi and we are doing well. I would say that we are actually doing amazing…

A.cz: You were attacked by a group of gunmen and were able to get away without any injuries. They only stole your things…

They took all of our equipment. In my case, they took all of my cameras, lenses and some money. I kept only my cell phone. My colleague Marek Hudema got away quite well because the only thing he had on him was a notebook. But the guys from television station Z1 who were driving with us lost all of their equipment, video cameras, and a laptop. Badly enough, they also took my passport. The Armenian driver that we hired lost his car.

A.cz: Do you know who the people were who attacked you?

We are almost 100 percent sure that it was neither Georgian nor Russian army. But we are not really sure who it was. It might have been Ossetians or Chechens or Kazakhs. It is quite complicated here. We would never guess that something like that could have happened to us in the center of Gori.

A.cz: Do you think that they only wanted to steal your things or did they also threaten to hurt you?

They were only after our equipment. It looked like a round-up by a police squad against some gangsters like you see in action-movies. They pulled their car in front of us, blocked our car, the driver slammed on the brakes. Before I was able to find myself and take some of my things, they were around us with machine guns. They were yelling, we were supposed to get out of the car. Either we get out of there, or they are going to shoot us, they yelled. So we left everything there, they jumped in their cars and drove away. It was done in a second.

A.cz: What did you do then?

We were dumbfounded. There were some Russian soldiers around and we knew that a skirmish with the Georgians could burst out any time. We did not expect it, we were shocked. We took our hiding place in one of the cellars where we found locals who were nice to us. And we also heard shooting from outside so we did not want to leave the cellar. We were debating for an hour about what to do, we sent a text message to our office and then we walked away. It would have been much worse if we waited and it got dark.

A.cz: How does one feel in a situation when one cannot control anything and is attacked by gunmen?

We were afraid. It was a feeling of fear, maybe rather a shock. The real fear came later. We were trying to figure out how to get out of a city that was occupied by Russian soldiers. You are scared by looking inside of a gun and looking at those crazy people that are pointing it at you. It was only when they left I became aware of all the things that could have happened.

A.cz: Are you staying in Georgia?

We would actually want to stay even after this unpleasant experience but I do not have any equipment. All I can do is collect information. I do not have enough money here to buy new equipment.

A.cz: You do not have your passport. How will you be able to leave the country?

Tomorrow we are going to the consulate. They already know that I do not have a passport. They said that they would try to take care of it as quickly as possible. We have to decide what to do next. We are at the police station now where we had to report the attack. We will see what the consulate tells us as well as what Reflex's attitude is. We were supposed to go back next Tuesday but we might have to change the flight.

A.cz: How do the locals view the situation in Georgia?

The situation is that people are sometimes strange and they have very mixed attitudes. There are Georgians who consider the invasion unacceptable and they are willing to die for it and then there are people who have no problem to move around there. And others talk to the Russians about why they actually came.

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