Posted on 09/01/2004 3:56:34 AM PDT by Grzegorz 246
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Armed attackers seized a school in southern Russia near Chechnya (news - web sites) on Wednesday, took up to 400 children and adults hostage and threatened to blow up the building if police tried to storm it, news agencies said.
In an assault that bore the hallmarks of a Chechen rebel operation, the gang, numbering up to 17 heavily-armed men and women, stormed into the secondary school in Beslan in North Ossetia province during a ceremony to mark the first day of the new school year.
RIA news agency said the gang, some of whom were strapped with explosives, had herded their captives into the school's gymnasium and mined it. They had threatened to blow up the building with their captives if interior ministry forces tried to take it by force.
Itar-Tass news agency said the militants were demanding the release of fighters seized in neighboring Ingushetia in June during a huge rebel raid on the region.
At least three civilians were killed and 11 injured in the initial phase of the attack, Tass quoted the local interior ministry as saying.
The agency said nearly 50 children managed to escape.
It was the latest in a wave of violence that has hit Russia in recent weeks, blamed on Chechen separatists and raising questions over President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites)'s hardline strategy to bring the rebels to heel.
Previous mass hostage-taking by Chechen militants in Russia have ended in heavy loss of life.
BODIES ON GROUND
"One body is lying near the entrance to the school. Two others are on the road near a fence. The attackers are not allowing anyone to collect the bodies. They open fire when anyone tries to approach them," Tass quoted the ministry official as saying after the school attack.
Schoolchildren, calling from inside the besieged building, told their parents that some people had been injured, possibly killed, as militants seized the building.
Reports of the exact number of hostages held varied between 200 and 400 and the number of children between 120 and 200. The school normally has about 900 schoolchildren and 60 teachers.
As interior ministry troops poured into the area, gunfire between the hostage-takers and police erupted.
Russian TV at the scene showed police racing for cover as bullets whined around the school building.
The mass hostage-taking was a new challenge to Putin's Chechnya policies. On Tuesday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up in central Moscow in an attack that killed 10 people and injured 51.
And on August 24 two passenger planes were blown up apparently by suicide bombers in attacks that killed 90 people.
There was no immediate word from Putin, who was in the Black Sea resort of Sochi where on Tuesday he had met German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and France's Jacques Chirac.
He had been due to visit Turkey this week but it seemed likely he may now have to call off his planned trip.
UP TO 400 SEIZED
"There could be up to 400 children and teachers held hostage," Irina Terkina, a spokeswoman for Putin's envoy in southern Russia, said by telephone.
Tass quoted local police as saying the attackers, some of whom were armed with shoulder-launched grenades, had rolled up at school No. 1 in a truck.
Several children had managed to escape as the drama began to unfold. "There is information that several kids managed to escape. They are now being questioned by police," Tass quoted a police source as saying.
"A police patrol at the school was the first to engage in fighting with the fighters...One of the attackers was killed," the source added.
In a separate report, Tass said, without giving a source, that some teachers may have been killed.
North Ossetia lies to the west of the seething Chechnya region where Russian forces have been fighting a war with separatist rebels for a decade.
There was no immediate charge that Chechen rebels were behind the attack, but the well-organized assault and the proximity to Chechnya suggested they may well be involved.
Religion and beliefs are ontegrated into one whole. As well you can say that beliefs are result of the religion.
And religion as a collective system of ultimate beliefs (the ones which are assumed by the society or a movement) in more general abstract meaning, can include marxism, national socialism or secular democracy.
Actually Communism IS a religion (as is the modern ideology of secularism, democracy, and free market).
Religion is a collective system of fundamental beliefs, asumptions, values, and behaviors, which organises the group, movement, society or culture.
The religious roots of Communism are well documented - Hegel in his synthesis of late Protestant theology and of the Enlightement made God the Absolute, which achieves self-realisation through the material universe and the historical dialectical progress.
Communists reversed Hegel's doctrine by believing that the material world itself aquires future divinity through the historical struggle. Thus the Communist worships the future mankind as god by joining the party (the church) and by the sacrifice of revolutionary activity. The Puritan dream of late Protestantism, the new world order of XVIIIc. deists, and the Jewish hope for the Mesianic kingdom in this world, are united in Marxism.
In this aspect, Communism is akin to National Socialism (based on race competition), modern sects (based on millenarist interpretation of the Bible) like Jehova Witnesses or some Protestant fundamentalists, the presently dominant social engineering of political correctness combined with the antinomian licence (promotion of pederasty for example), militant secularism (removal of more traditional religious competition), democracy (sacred voice of the people) and the blind trust in the magical power of free market.
Self serving ping.
St. Michael's Prayer (tweeked just a little)
St. Michael, The Archangel, defend these Russian Kids in their day of battle, be their defense, protection and safeguard, against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou oh prince, of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls.
I advise all to say it for these kids.
I really don't want to be on your ping list.
No problem, you are removed.
Demonstrated by what? Classic literature? Art? Scientific discoveries?
You provide the proof, please.
The Spanish Inquisition was one of the finest moments in Spain, or Europe.
Not ALL the results were positive, just as not ALL the results of the Civil War were positive--e.g., the "reconstruction" governments forced on the South.
As any Google search will tell you, those who suffered deserved it (by and large,) no different from jurisprudence in USA today.
APole is correct. The theo/philosophial system built from a particular religion is of primary importance in forming the religion's followers.
US Muslims are generally more amicable, partly because of the US cultural impact on them--but the US cultural impact is based on Christianity--the brotherhood of man is based on 'sonship' under God, etc., etc.
Well said.
Indeed, Communism is a religion without God--but having a god.
Chesterton remarked on that: "The old tyrants invoked the past. The NEW tyrants invoke the future."
Any insights on the school matter?
Some are, some aren't.
Judaism and its "Son"
Christianity
are solely concerned
with an individual's
response to God's love
and our Fallen flesh.
Any "collective" aspect
to these religions
is secondary
(and usually man-made
corruption of faith).
That's why Christian soil
saw the germination of
capitalism . . .
Muslims won't stop at anything --- you see them strapping bombs onto their own children just to kill a handful of innocent Israelis at a bus stop. These people are soul-less and evil.
I believe the children will die or at least large percentage. Some of these men already discovered and authorities to gather up their families...revenge indeed...also the Ossessians, though Christian, not new to revenge...they shall now go and burn and massacre Chechins in revenge...this may turn to general war of various groups and in the world of today with no major Islamic state so close to aid, this may turn to general washing away of Islam from Caucus, where it is minority (though large minority). If so, though it is something best happen by conversion, it is long overdue.
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