Posted on 09/03/2004 10:33:46 PM PDT by Walkin Man
RUSSIA'S NIGHTMARE
TWO DAYS OF SHEER TERROR
By PAUL THOMPSON and JAMES CLENCH
THE full horror inflicted on hostages inside the sweltering school gym was revealed by shellshocked survivors last night.
For two days 1,200 children and adults stared death in the face after being herded into the gym by terrorists.
First, the captors planted two big bombs in the basketball hoops, then trailed cables to smaller devices around the building.
Windows were smashed out to restrict the effect of any knockout gas, which was used to end the Moscow theatre siege in 2002. And male hostages were regularly put up in front of the windows to act as human shields.
Survivor Zalina Dzandarova, 27, told how two women bombers blew themselves up in a corridor on the FIRST DAY of the siege, killing some male hostages.
One girl told how the siege began. She said: “A military truck appeared in front of the school. People wearing camouflage and masks jumped out — I could see only their eyes and beards.
“They opened fire, everyone started running. Some people, including myself, managed to hide behind a fence. Several gunmen stayed outside, near the entrance. They started screaming at us in very good Russian, ‘Russians, Russians, come here, don’t be afraid’.
“One terrorist tried to lure the children in with chocolate.”
A teacher said children were rounded up at the school in Beslan within “two or three minutes”.
She recalled: “We had begun to form a line in the schoolyard to listen to the headmistress’s September 1 speeches when suddenly we heard shots.
“We were herded into the sports hall. The doors in the hall were locked. Two large explosive devices were put in the basketball nets. Then the whole place was mined within ten minutes.”
Atsamas Ketsoyev, 14, said: “There were two women wearing explosive belts. There was also a man standing with his foot on something like a pedal or button.”
Physics teacher Rita Gadzhinova described the appalling conditions as temperatures hit the 80s.
People were forced to strip in a bid to stay cool and kids deprived of water drank their own urine in desperation.
A few gasping hostages got to slake their thirst when captors ripped clothes off young girls and soaked them in water.
One said: “They tore them off us, wet them with water and threw them back. It was the only water we got.”
Another teacher said children were so hungry they ripped LEAVES off pot-plants for food.
When toddlers began crying the Chechen terrorists fired shots into the air to keep them quiet.
The teacher added: “A frightened child in the hall made a noise and one of the fighters seized a child and threatened to kill it if the noise didn’t stop.”
The terrorists never removed their masks and always talked in a whisper.
A teenage boy revealed: “They told us to sit down by the windows. I was sitting there for five hours. They always told us to shut up and vowed to kill 15 of us every hour if we didn’t stop crying.”
The hostages suffered the desperate conditions for 53 hours until another woman bomber is thought to have accidentally blown herself up — punching a gaping hole in the gym wall.
Around 40 kids managed to scramble out before police blew out a larger section of wall to help more captives flee.
One boy described how he was “blown out of the window by an explosion”. He gasped: “Many, many dead. Many dead children.”
After the second blast, the roof collapsed, leaving only the rafters.
Volunteer Alan Karayev said after ferrying victims from the building: “The floor is covered in bodies. There is no ceiling at all. The roof fell down on the children.”
BBC reporter Sarah Rainsford added: “There was an explosion and a wall and roof collapsed and those bodies are there among the ruins.”
A 15-year-old boy last night emerged as one of the siege heroes.
Kazbek Dzaragasov fled for his life with pal Sado Nazriyv, 16, when the terrorists burst in.
But the brave teenager turned back when he realised younger sister Agunda was still in her third-grade class. The siblings were last seen on Thursday by a freed woman who told Sado they were huddled together on the gym floor.
Sado told how the camouflaged terrorists injected blind panic into the pupils as they screamed at them to lie face down on the floor.
He said: “They started shooting. At first we thought it was a joke.
“We ran to the police and started screaming at them that the school had been taken captive. They didn’t believe us at first.”
A heroic English teacher saved 16-year-old Kristina Varziyeva and other students by shoving them into a boiler room — then fleeing through a window.
Later Sky News reporter Rachel Amatt dodged bullets to tell viewers how a mob beat up a dying terrorist flushed out of the school.
Brave Rachel, 31, said: “By the end of it, this man was clearly dead.”
Last night terrorist expert Prof Paul Wilkinson, of St Andrews University, blasted the Russian handling of the siege.
He said ambulances should have been at the scene and parents should not have been allowed to wander into the school — leading to more deaths.
The Beslan outrage is the latest in a string of attacks on Russia. Last month two jets were blown from the sky south of Moscow, killing 90.
And last week a “Black Widow” suicide bomber killed nine at an underground station in Moscow.
Sooner or later, To the moon !
Can you imagine the horror these poor little kids will have to live with the rest of their lives?
Everyone of the dogs that carryed out this crime against humanity needs to be hunted down and killed!
That's right, if Sep. 11 had happened on Sep. 30, we'd have heard about how it was "last month" the very next day. If that foiled millenium bombing of LAX had gone off on Dec. 31, 1999, we'd have heard about how it happened "last year" as soon as the clock tolled midnight.
Whatever world sympathies they had during the 1st war with Russia, and somewhat during the second, are totally gone...
Images if babies being killed, schools being taken hostage... What could they POSSIBLY be thinking?
Recruiting Arabs to assist only makes their cause that much more despicable
Another lame, albeit tragic, attempt by Islamo-facists.
There's one common theme here... These terrorist acts, for decades now, have almost all been perpetrated by Muslims, yet the media hides that fact... From the Mideast, to Africa, to Phillipines, to Chechnya...
Thank you for letting me know.
The most disturbing thing about the article is the little girl wanting to tell her mother what happened and the mother not letting her. In America, this little girl would get some help, but I fear nothing of the sort will happen in Russia.
I've been haunted by this story since I have a 5 year old and a 2 year old. I've thought time and time again about what I would do. I would have someone else take my 2 year old to saftey and stay with my 5 year old if that was an option. I would never vountarily flee and leave my child behind. I'm not faulting the mother here, just saying what I would like to think I would do in a similar situation.
Oh, no bother, it is English newspaper. Provided the fact that they have not closed a famous Finsburry mosque, the "rebels" seems to be a kind of british political correctness.
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