Russia: Al-Qaida involved in school attack; at least 340 dead

BESLAN, Russia - Russian President Vladimir Putin called Saturday for a new approach to law enforcement in the wake of the school hostage crisis that killed more than 340 people, and pledged the reform would be in accordance with the nation's constitution.

Putin said international terrorists had declared "a full-scale war" against Russia, and that due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nation was weakened and unable to respond as effectively as it must.

The Russian premier flew to Beslan before dawn on Saturday, as smoke was still rising from the shattered school. Russian authorities, who have tried to prove that the battle with Chechnya is part of the international war on terror, have accused Al-Qaida of involvement in the Beslan attack, Army Radio reported.

"In any case, we couldn't adequately react ... We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten."

He noted in particular that Russia's borders had become porous and "unprotected from either West or East," and that corruption had pervaded the law enforcement agencies.

Putin called for mobilizing the nation before what he called the "common danger" of terrorism. He said measures would be taken to strengthen Russia's territorial integrity, create a more effective crisis management system, and overhaul the law enforcement organs.

In a visit at dead of night to the hospital in the town of Beslan, the scene of the drama not far from Chechnya, Putin warned separatist sympathizers they would be viewed as "accomplices of terrorism".

The death toll after Friday's bloody climax to the two-day siege included 155 school children, many of them held inside a gym by their captors, and confirmed the episode as the grimmest hostage-taking of modern times.

Officials confirmed for the first time media reports that the separatists had taken more than 1,000 people hostage when they stormed into the school on Wednesday.

A total of 26 militants, 10 of them Arabs according to Russian officials, had staged the hostage seizure, said Deputy Prosecutor-General Sergei Fridinsky. All had been killed.

"As a result of the terrorist acts, 322 people were killed, 155 of whom were children I think the death toll will rise, but probably not very much," Fridinsky said.

Putin said he had ordered Beslan and the surrounding region of North Ossetia to be sealed off in follow-up operations by security forces.

"One of the tasks pursued by the terrorists was to stoke ethnic hatred, to blow up the whole of our North Caucasus," he told security officials.

"Anyone who feels sympathetic towards such provocations will be viewed as accomplices of terrorists and terrorism."

Moscow bridled quickly at a more querulous statement by the European Union's Dutch presidency demanding an explanation for the bloodshed. It said this was out of keeping with solidarity shown by other countries and denounced it as "blasphemous."

The large number of dead left barely a family untouched in Beslan. Normally a backwater of the Caucasus with a population of 30,000, the town was a swirl of grief, anger and uncertainty.

Some people vented their anger against Putin, unusual given his popularity. "Putin came here at four this morning," said Boris, whose neighbor and all her family disappeared.

"He saw no one and talked to no one. He just wanted to show the world how young and handsome he is but he hasn't helped and he won't help and he can't stop this happening again."

Ruslan, a young man, was searching for his wife: "I've been searching all day and I can't find her. Where are our people ? No one tells us anything. No one is protecting us."

Most of the dead had been in the school's gym, officials said. They were killed either by explosions that brought down the roof, mined by the hostage-takers, or by the fire and the battles between soldiers and captors that followed.

Putin's harsh tone in his quick visit to Beslan suggested he had no plan to relax his determination to crush mainly Muslim Chechnya's rebellion and keep it within Russia, using tactics long criticized by human rights activists.

The storming of the school by Russian forces, after explosions inside, unleashed pandemonium. Pupils, parents and teachers, many drenched in blood, were carried out on stretchers or in the arms of local men as bullets flew overhead.

The authorities said they had been forced to send in troops when the gunmen opened fire on fleeing children.

Some 25 bodies were laid out in the yard of Middle School No. 1 on Saturday morning, most in body bags, but some, men without shirts, lay uncovered just outside a school window.

Four of the dozen or so mass hostage sieges in the past 30 years have been in Russia. All four have been linked to the war in Chechnya and all ended in huge loss of life.

Explosives and arms used by the gunmen had been smuggled into the school well in advance during summer building work, Interfax quoted an unnamed regional security source as saying.

Freed hostages described Friday's mayhem. "Bombs were strung all over the gym," one teenage girl told state television. "Tape came unstuck on one and it blew up."

North Ossetia is the only predominantly Orthodox province in the otherwise mostly Muslim North Caucasus. But the whole region is a tinderbox of small national groups and any crackdown carries a risk of disrupting further a delicate ethnic balance.

Thanks Nasher for the reminder - lets just put it out there.

Kerry says threat of terrorism is exaggerated

By Brian DeBose
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts said during last night's Democratic presidential debate that the threat of terrorism has been exaggerated.

"I think there has been an exaggeration," Mr. Kerry said when asked whether President Bush has overstated the threat of terrorism. "They are misleading all Americans in a profound way."

The front-runner for the Democratic nomination said he would engage other nations in a more cooperative fashion to quell terrorism.

"This administration's arrogant and ideological policy is taking America down a more dangerous path," Mr. Kerry said. "I will make America safer than they are."

Every mother and father in America has surely said to themselves, "That could happen here, in my child's school."

I thought all those laws prohibiting guns on school property would prevent such occurance.

"In general, we need to admit that we did not show an understanding of the complexities and dangers of the processes occurring in our own country and in the world," he said in a grim televised address to the nation.

"In any case, we couldn't adequately react ... We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten."

This should be on the front page of every newspaper in America tomorrow. Putin gets it!

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