Posted on 09/03/2004 1:54:33 PM PDT by Nachum
BESLAN, Russia (AP) - Commandos stormed a school Friday in southern Russia and overcame separatist rebels holding hundreds of hostages as crying children, some naked and covered in blood, fled the building through explosions and gunfire. Health officials said more than 200 people died, the Interfax news agency reported.
Ninety-five victims were identified - many of them children whose shattered, bloodied bodies were placed on lines of stretchers - and Interfax quoted unnamed sources in the regional Health Ministry as saying more than 200 people were killed by fire from the militants or died from their wounds.
Hundreds of hostages survived the crisis, which in targeting children on the first day of classes crossed a boundary and amounted to a significant escalation in the decade-old Russian-Chechen conflict. More than 700 others were injured, officials said.
World governments angrily condemned the school seizure. U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday called it "another grim reminder of the length to which terrorists will go to threaten this civilized world."
Russian authorities insisted that the militants initiated Friday's violence as emergency teams entered the school, with the hostage-takers' permission, to collect the bodies of several men who had been executed earlier. It was not clear where the tragic end to the siege would leave President Vladimir Putin's tough policy on Chechnya, which to date had enjoyed broad support despite the heavy toll rebel violence has taken in recent years.
An explosives expert told NTV television that the commandos charged into the building after bombs - hung in basketball hoops by the hostage-takers - exploded. A sobbing young girl who escaped the school told NTV that a suicide bomber blew herself up in the gym where children were kept captive.
Twenty militants were killed in more than 10 hours of gunfights with security forces, 10 of them Arabs, Valery Andreyev, the region's Federal Security Service chief, said in televised comments. Putin's adviser on Chechnya, Aslanbek Aslakhanov, also said a number of the dead militants were Arab mercenaries.
After trading fire with militants holed up in the basement of a school annex, officials said the fighting was over, but that four militants remained at large. Three suspected hostage-takers were arrested trying to escape wearing civilian dress, Channel One TV reported, and Ekho Moskvy radio said a suspected female hostage-taker was detained when she approached an area hospital wearing a white robe.
The Arab presence among the attackers would bolster Putin's case that the Russian campaign in neighboring Chechnya, where mostly Muslim separatists have been fighting Russian forces in a brutal war for most of the past decade, is part of the war on international terrorism.
Late Friday, the ITAR-Tass new agency cited unspecified security sources as saying al-Qaida financed the attack on the school, and that Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev masterminded the raid. The report also said an alleged al-Qaida operative, Abu Omar as-Saif, coordinated the financing of the attack.
Regional President Alexander Dzasokhov said Friday that the hostage-takers had demanded that Russian troops leave Chechnya - the first clear indication of their demands and of a direct link between the attack on the school and the ongoing war in the neighboring region.
Officials at the crisis headquarters said 95 victims had been identified. Emergency Situations Ministry officials said 704 people were hospitalized, including 259 children. Many were badly burned.
Aslakhanov told Interfax the death toll could be "much more" than 150, and said in televised comments that the militants claimed they initially seized some 1,200 hostages, most of them children - far more than earlier estimates of 350.
The militants seized the school in North Ossetia on Wednesday, a day after a suicide bomb blast outside a Moscow subway station killed at least nine people, and just over a week after two Russian passenger jets crashed nearly simultaneously after what authorities believed were explosions on board triggered by suicide bombers, possibly Chechen women.
A hostage who escaped told Associated Press Television News that the militants numbered 28, including women in camouflage. The hostage, who identified himself only as Teimuraz, said the militants began wiring the school with explosives as soon as they took control Wednesday.
The commandos stormed the school on the third day of the crisis, moving in after about 30 women and children broke out of the building, some bloodied and screaming, after the explosions.
Russian officials said the violence came when - under an agreement reached Friday morning - emergency workers entered the school to retrieve the bodies of hostages who had been killed. A local legislator, Azamat Kadykov, had told the hostages' relatives that 20 adult men had been executed.
Andreyev said there were two large explosions, and people started running. He said militants fired at fleeing hostages, and security forces opened return fire, along with civilian residents of the town who had armed themselves. The police sapper, speaking on NTV television, said bombs hanging from basketball hoops exploded.
The bomb expert said the gym had also been rigged with explosives packed in plastic bottles strung up around the room on a cord and stuffed with metal objects.
Women escaping the building were seen fainting and others, some covered in blood, were carried away on stretchers. Many children - parched, hungry and only partly clothed because of the stifling heat in the gym - ran out screaming and begging for water.
"They didn't let me go to the toilet for three days, not once. They never let me drink or go to the toilet," Teimuraz, the escaped hostage, told APTN.
Two emergency services workers were killed and three wounded during the chaos, Interfax reported.
Interfax said the school's roof collapsed, possibly from the explosives. The militants had reportedly threatened to blow up the building if authorities used force. Andreyev and Aslakhanov said there had been no plans to storm the school and that authorities had pinned hopes on negotiations.
Putin had said Thursday that everything possible would be done to end the "horrible" crisis and save the lives of the children and other hostages in this town of 35,000 people.
The word "terrorist" doesn't appear in the Reuters Style Book.
Where were the mullahs and the imams in condemning this atrocity while it was ongoing and demanding the release of these innocents? Where were the Muslim "holy men" when children were denied food and water for 52 hours, were made to drink their own urine, were denied their medicines, had to watch while their dads were executed? All I heard was the sound of silence, which sounds an awful lot like either cowardice or even tacit support.
why do we even negotiate with these animals? why cant we just go general sherman and march through every middle eastern country destroying everything?
there animals..there not even human..so why even feel guilty about doing the deed?
This article I can live with.
Already today I have heard some "talking heads" opining that the Russian Security Forces "botched" this hostage crisis.
It truly enrages me. Just like the "It's all America's fault" crowd when it comes to the war on terrorism.
I am sure that the Russian Forces did the best they possibly could trying to bring an end to this barbaric, and amoral assault on the children, and families at the school, and in trying to preserve the lives of as many of the hostages as they could.
Note to talking heads: The Russians didn't strap bombs to themselves and go into an elementary school reeking violence and destruction on little children. The Terrorists did.
If 17 Christians or Jews suddenly went wild and held over a 1000 Muslim school children hostage, the world media would run out of ink condemning it. Al-Jezarra would have screaming fits on the air. But have you heard of even one Muslim group that has condemned this action by Muslim terrorists? Is the world press really interested?
No, let's get back to the crucial debate about Israel tearing down their protective wall which was built so their children can't be hurt so often by Muslim terrorists...
I have a word for them as well, though not one of advice. And running won't help them.
OMOH
Chechen Republic of Ichkeria
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Friday, 03 September 2004
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expresses our deepest condolences to the relatives and friends of all victims of the hostage taking in Beslan. The Chechen nation, having lost 25 % of its population at the hands of the Russian state policy of genocide during the last 10 years, know very well the pain of loosing the loved ones, the horrors of monstrous brutality against innocent defenceless people, children, women and men. There is no a single Chechen whose relatives and friends have not been murdered, tortured or raped by the Russian troops and security services since December 1994.
As the past experience tells us that Russian security services often are involved in planning, executing or manipulating various terrorist attacks on the territory of Russia, including the apartment bombings in Moscow in 1999 and the hostage taking in the Moscow theatre in 2002, we call upon all Russian citizens to demand from the Russian government to agree to an independent and transparent international investigation of this hostage taking in Beslan. We strongly believe that the Chechens, Russians and the international community has the right to know what actually has happened and who really were the hostage takers and the organisers of this terrorist act, and we hope that this call will not go unanswered.
Press Office
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
www.chechnya-mfa.info
Press Office of Chechen MFA
So Russian security services took their own kids hostage and shot them, took their own theater hostage and gassed them, and staged all the Moscow bombings to boot? Tell me another story, Chechens and al Qaeda. There's not a rock big enough or a hole deep enough for you to hide in now.
Russians are getting up near 911 numbers. Adding up all the dead bodies over the last few yrs.
The Russians should exterminate the Chechnyan populace. They are all guilty.
Such a move would send a strong message to Muslims all over.
If you read the sentence the way it was written, the REAL problem here is that the Russians are putting Arabs in their security forces. Terrible idea.
Or, more likely I think, this is just another misplaced modifier, as employed by yet another illiterate journalist.
Sounds like the Arabs blaming the Jews for everything.
That is reprehensible.
Why these reporters fail to mention that North Ossentia is primarily Christian bothers me also. I consider it helpful info in understanding the situation more completely.
Seems to me the sentence should read:
In more than 10 hours of gunfights with security forces, twenty militants were killed, 10 of them Arabs.
Buried in the article but at least they are getting closer to calling them what they are - muslim terrorists'.
"The regulars are coming, The regulars are coming"
Definition of a militia.
WARNING: This is a high volume ping list
Fortunately, Russia is not as bound by the rules of political correctness as we were after 9/11. I hope they take all reasonable measures to make sure this never happens again. Making sure there are no Chechens to make it happen again would be IMO reasonable.
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