Posted on 09/03/2004 5:12:39 AM PDT by Former Military Chick
BESLAN, North Ossetia -- Hostage-takers released 30 women and children, including three infants, but more than 300 people remained trapped inside a school in this North Ossetian town for a second day Thursday. President Vladimir Putin said winning their freedom is his "main goal."
In a first release, two women and three babies left the school and crossed a security perimeter to safety Wednesday afternoon. One of the babies was naked and sat silently in the back seat of a sedan as former Ingush President Ruslan Aushev, who helped negotiate the group's release, addressed a crowd of anxious relatives.
A few minutes later, the heavily armed hostage-takers freed 25 women and children from the other side of the school. A teenage girl, wearing black pants and a black shirt with white stripes and holding a pink purse, was so weak that two or three men carried her out.
"The negotiations have intensified and this is the first success," said Lev Dzugayev, an aide to North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov.
He singled out Aushev, who has a degree of respect among Chechen rebels, as deserving credit for the release.
It was unclear whether Aushev or the well-known doctor Leonid Roshal, who is also assisting in negotiations, offered the group of 17 attackers anything in exchange.
Roshal said Thursday night that negotiations were centering on getting food, water and medicine to the hostages.
He was in contact with a man who called himself Gorets, or Mountain Man. "Mountain men don't behave this way," he added.
Panic broke out in the crowd waiting for news near the school when two explosions rocked the area in the afternoon. The attackers, some of whom are wearing suicide-bomb belts, had mined the school and threatened to blow it up if federal forces tried to storm it.
It turned out that the attackers had used grenade launchers to fire at two cars that had driven too close to the school, rescue headquarters said. A gutted car could be seen about 100 meters away from the school.
The attackers seized the school Wednesday morning during a ceremony welcoming children to their first day of classes. Parents and teachers are also among the hostages.
Beslan is located about 10 kilometers west of the border with Ingushetia.
The attackers have demanded the withdrawal of federal troops from Chechnya and the release of insurgents jailed after bloody raids in Ingushetia in June.
The group is probably being led by Magomed Yevloyev, an ethnic Ingush and follower of the radical Islam Wahhabi movement, RIA-Novosti reported, citing law enforcement officials.
Chechen warlord Doku Umarov also may be leading the group. A schoolboy who fled before the attackers locked the school's doors Wednesday recognized the red-bearded Umarov in a photograph shown by an Izvestia reporter.
Putin used a Thursday morning meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah II to break his silence about the hostage crisis. He vowed to do his best to save lives but offered no indication of how that would be accomplished or whether the Kremlin might reverse its policy of refusing to engage in political negotiations.
"We understand that these attacks target not only specific Russian citizens but Russia as a w
hole. What is happening in North Ossetia is horrible," Putin said.
"Our main goal in this situation is, of course, to save the lives and health of those who have found themselves taken hostage," he said.
After meeting with Abdullah, who condemned the hostage-taking, Putin took phone calls from U.S. President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who expressed support and offered assistance, the Kremlin press service said.
Schroeder offered to send a German air force jet equipped to serve as a hospital so that any wounded could be helped as they are flown to safety, a German government spokesman said, Reuters reported.
There were conflicting reports on how many people remained captive.
Dzugayev, the presidential aide, said 350 children and adults were in the school, but the region's interior minister put the number at 400 children alone. Relatives said they feared 800 to 1,200 people were being held hostage.
The school has about 1,000 students, relatives said.
"I think they're not telling us everything, but we have nobody else to place our hopes on," said Irina Parsiyeva, 40, whose 14-year-old daughter, Anzhelika, is among the hostages.
Reports on the number of dead also varied.
North Ossetian Interior Minister Kazbek Dzantiyev said 12 people had been killed. Among the dead was a father, who had brought his child to school and tried to resist the attackers, and an attacker who died in the seizure of the school.
An official at rescue headquarters told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity early Thursday that 16 people were dead -- 12 inside the school, two in the hospital and the two others outside the school. The official said 13 were wounded.
Putin warned that the crisis "could explode a fragile balance" among different religious and ethnic groups in North Ossetia and Ingushetia. "We will do everything that we can to avert such a development of the situation," he said.
The Ingush and North Ossetians fought a war in the early 1990s after the Ingush laid claim to parts of North Ossetia and its capital, Vladikavkaz. Latent tensions linger because many Ingush refugees remain unable to return to their homes in North Ossetia.
Ingush Wahhabi Yevloyev and Chechen warlord Umarov led the raids in Ingushetia in June together with a group of some 200 Ingush and Chechen militants. Notorious Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev has said he helped mastermind those attacks, which killed about 90 people.
An attacker at the North Ossetian school told The New York Times on Wednesday that the hostage-takers are part of Basayev's Salakhin Riadus Shakhidi battalion.
Relatives of the hostages expressed concern Thursday about the prospect of violence if there were Ingush among the attackers. "We're afraid that a new conflict may start between us and the Ingush," Parsiyeva said.
"But although our boys and men are ready to go, all we have is pistols and old rifles," said Parsiyeva, who teaches in another Beslan school.
Roshal said that if the crisis ends in tragedy, a war will break out between the Ingush and North Ossetians in which thousands will die.
Simon Saradzhyan reported from Moscow.
Old news..I'll ping you to the latest.
THe thing is over... Russian troops stormed the building, all hostages freed (many wounded). Terrorists dead or on the run.
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