Posted on 09/03/2004 11:15:02 PM PDT by Destro
Putin sees Russian tragedy
September 4, 2004 - 2:19PM
Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited the town where commandos stormed a school in which militants were holding hundreds hostage in a chaotic battle that left at least 95 people dead.
"All Russia grieves with you," Putin said during a meeting with local officials in Beslan in the North Ossetia region, broadcast on government television.
He said targeting children made the hostage crisis worse than other acts of terrorism: "Even alongside the most cruel attacks of the past this terrorist act occupies a special place because it was aimed at children."
He said he had ordered the region's borders closed while officials search for everyone connected with the attack.
Putin arrived with smoke still rising from the shattered school, only hours after the last scattered shooting died away.
On Friday, commandos stormed the building and battled militants as crying children, some naked and covered with blood, managed to flee through explosions and gunfire.
They had endured more than two days during which the hostage takers herded them into the school gym, denied them food and water and threatened to kill them.
Other children lay dead on stretchers lined up outside.
Officials said they had identified 95 of the dead. The Interfax news agency, citing unidentified officials, said the toll was over 200.
The attack follows a suicide bomb attack outside a Moscow subway station Tuesday that killed eight people, and last week's near-simultaneous crash of two Russian jetliners last week after what officials believe were explosions on board.
Putin warned against letting the latest attack in North Ossetia stir up tensions in the multi-ethnic North Caucasus region.
"One of the goals of the terrorist was to sow ethnic enmity and blow up the North Caucasus," Putin said.
"Anyone who gives in to such a provocation will be viewed by us as abetting terrorism," he said.
During a hospital visit, a sombre Putin saw several of the victims, stopping to stroke the head of one injured child.
Russian authorities said the bloody end to the standoff came after explosions apparently set off by the militants - possibly by accident - as emergency workers were entering the school to collect the bodies of slain hostages.
As hostages took their chance to flee, the militants opened fire on them, and security forces - along with town residents who had brought their own weapons - opened covering fire to help the hostages escape.
Commandos stormed into the building and secured it, then chased fleeing militants in the town, with shooting lasting for 10 hours.
An explosives expert told NTV television that the hostage takers, themselves strapped with explosives, hung bombs from basketball hoops in the gym and set other explosive devices in the building. Bomb experts are examining the building.
The Federal Security Service chief in North Ossetia, Valery Andreyev, said that 10 militants killed in gunfights with security forces were from Arab countries, and Putin's adviser on Chechnya, Aslanbek Aslakhanov, said nine were "Arab mercenaries."
An Arab presence among the attackers would help Putin argue that the Russian campaign in neighbouring 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 - seen by Putin's critics as an attempt to deflect human rights criticism.
The region's governor, Alexander Dzasokhov, said that the militants had demanded that Russian troops leave Chechnya - the first solid indication that the attack was connected to the rebellion.
The hostage crisis ended in chaos as fleeing hostages, many of them injured, streamed from the building into the surrounding area and parents searched frantically for their children. Ambulances couldn't carry all the injured and private cars were pressed into service.
Alla Gadieyeva, a 24-year-old hostage who was seized with her son and mother - all three were among the survivors - said the captors laughed when she asked them for water for her mother.
"When children began to faint, they laughed," Gadieyeva said. "They were totally indifferent."
Two emergency services workers were killed and three wounded during the chaos, Interfax reported. Eighteen wounded commandos were being treated in a Defence Ministry hospital in the town of Vladikavkaz, the news agency reported, most of them with bullet wounds.
The militants had reportedly threatened to blow up the building if authorities used force. Russian officials stressed that they had not planned to storm the school.
Intermittent negotiations led to the freeing of about 26 women and children on Thursday, and Russian officials and others had been in on-and-off contacts with the hostage-takers, but with few signs of progress toward a resolution.
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 gymnasium's roof collapsed during the assault, possibly because of the explosions, and the sprawling red-brick school was left a smoking ruin.
The militants had broken most of the windows early in the standoff in what may have been an effort to keep authorities from using knockout gas against them.
Two major hostage-taking raids by Chechen rebels outside the war-torn region in the past decade provoked Russian rescue operations that led to many deaths.
The seizure of a Moscow theatre in 2002 ended after a knockout gas was pumped into the building, debilitating the captors but causing almost all of the 129 hostage deaths.
In 1995 - during the first of two wars in Chechnya in the past decade - rebels led by guerrilla commander Shamil Basayev seized a hospital in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk, taking some 2,000 people hostage. The six-day standoff ended with a fierce Russian assault, and some 100 people died.
© 2004 AP
These terrorists were trained by Al Quaeda:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1207083/posts
What in your little mind makes you think Bush can take away nukes from the Paks ?
They are at war with India and would rather die then give up their nukes. India has them out numbered by what 7-8 times?
Rifles and shotguns permitted, pistols extremely heavily restricted and no machineguns.
Their Tigr rifle is basically a civilian Druganov Sniper Rifle
I saw that too. Curious.
7.62 X 54....one could do worse.
I think Ossetia is a "front line state" in the Chechen war. There have been many other raids on towns, hospitals etc. Most Russian men have had military service. I think with the end of the USSR, a lot of AK-47s were "mislaid."
A civilian could do worse....
Pakistan created nuclear weapons in the 90s under Clinton and they have an arsenal now. Their bomb maker was selling nuclear bomb making tech around the world. Lives in a villa in Pakistan.
PS: I was responding to fooman's hypothetical question.
If Muhammadans, the only ones who really can stop all of this in reality by rising up in opposition and really doing something, don't stop talking out of their 'Moderate' side of their 'face' while waging a cowardly 'jihad' against non-Muhammadans, then wipe them all out if need be.
Lunatic demon-possessed persons are a waste of time to negotiate with. Good people DIE in the process.
amen...I think it's a fine utilitarian tool...like most East Bloc stuff.
I'd like one.
Me too, but KBI only imported about 100 of them into the USA and the current laws will not allow it into the country. Expect to pay more than you would for a good M-14. (Of course that is on my wish list too)
I bet they are on Squantos's dance card for his sod poodles.
Iraq is a base of operations to a)fight the cowardly Muhammadans 'over ther' as opposed to 'over here' and b) turn (-) nations in the Muahammadan equation into (+) nations regarding world security, through freedom and legislative representation.
And anyone that don't like it can get in line!
America: Red, White and Blue - all over you!
Me too, but KBI only imported about 100 of them into the USA and the current laws will not allow it into the country. Expect to pay more than you would for a good M-14. (Of course that is on my wish list too)
Pakistan - America's ally - has nukes. Pakistan is an enemy of Russia and her ally India and Pakistan is an enemy of Iran. Saudi Arabia is also on bad terms with Iraq.
Looking at the world through geopolitical eyes Iran is not a danger to Russia. So the statement I responded to was ignorant of the facts.
Do I wish Russia cooperated and did not help Iran? Yes! But why should Russia when NATO moves to its borders and flies sorties there every day?
Have one smuggled over the Mexican border for yourself...everyone's doing it.../sarcasm
If Muhammadan terrorists in say, Chechnya, got their hands on a nuke from say, Iran, the main Muhammadan 'Source' problem for 25 years now, I doubt that Putin would wish he hadn't helped us terminate Iran after covering up his activities WITH SODOM INSANE IN IRAQ until moments before we concluded the war of 1991.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.