Posted on 09/02/2004 5:11:32 PM PDT by blam
Hostages freed from Russian siege school
(Filed: 02/09/2004)
The armed gang holding more than 350 people hostage in a Russian school has released 31 women and children.
Two-year-old Amina Dzantieva is comforted by her father after being freed from the school
Officials said the hostages were released in a group of 26 and another of three women and two children.
Russian soldiers carried children through crowds of relatives waiting outside the school in Beslan, 40 miles from the border with Chechnya.
The move came well into the second day of the siege and hours after President Vladimir Putin made a national television address in which he said security forces would not storm the school.
The gang of around 40 heavily armed gunmen and women, believed to be Chechen rebels or sympathisers, took control of the school yesterday morning.
Between four and seven people, including two parents, were killed in the assault before the attackers herded around 400 hostages into the school's gymnasium.
Many of the gunmen have explosives strapped to their bodies and the gang has threatened to blow up the school and kill the children if security forces attack the building.
Mr Putin, who has cancelled a trip to Turkey to deal with the crisis, said the safety of the hostages was paramount in the negotiations to end the siege.
"Our main task is to save the life and health of those who have ended up as hostages," he said. "All the action of our forces will be devoted to solving this task."
Valery Andreyev, the head of the FSB security service in North Ossetia, said his troops would not try to attack the gunmen.
Relatives of the children wait anxiously for news
"There is no question at the moment of opting for force," he said. "There will be a lengthy and tense process of negotiation."
Leonid Roshal, a doctor who helped negotiations in the Moscow theatre siege two years ago, has spoken to the gunmen by telephone but has yet to meet them.
The gang is reported to have demanded the release of fighters captured in the neighbouring region of Ingushetia in June.
Before the release of the hostages, a loud explosion followed by a plume of smoke prompted alarm among residents waiting for news from inside the school.
Officials said the smoke came from a burning car near the school. It was not clear what caused the explosion.
Earlier, the gang gave police a telephone police number to use following tentative approaches last night. "We are ready for a meeting," Mr Andreyev said. "We will do all we can to free the children."
The raid came a day after a suspected Chechen suicide bomber blew herself up outside a Moscow subway station, killing nine people, and just over a week after 90 people died in two plane crashes that were suspected to have been blown up by suicide bombers.
It's high time to put an end to Islamic extremism, world wide.
If these monsters start killing innocent children they're going to end up wishing they had never been born.
So 369 hostages left?
Prayers sent for the hostages.
God knows what I want to happen to the terrorists, so no prayers needed about that aspect.
The Russian government has admitted their first estimates of the number of people in there is wrong, the locals are claiming as many as 850 people are being held in there.
When they went into this operation, they knew they were going to die.
But but the left insists that terror warnings are political and exaggerated.
"When they went into this operation, they knew they were going to die"
And it pays well to your family when you do - 30K and up.
They will "die" for a million eternities.
I hope our school administrators are watching this standoff. It could happen here. I pray this doesn't end badly.
Dang!
You bet.
But did they know that they were (hopefully) going to be embalmed in pig fat, and since the Russians aren't very PC, so were (hopefully) their near and distant relatives?
Our schools are a bit ill-equipped to deal with something of this intense nature. Now down here, I suspect that there are a handful of armed teachers (despite the law), but up in northern cities, that just isn't likely to be the case. Then again, there's the possibility of there being some armed students in some large cities. :>)
Headlines: Al Queda terrorists die in Blood's/Crips crossfire.
Yup. I looked in the phone book and have seen that there is a mosque in town, I've never seen a mid-eastern type in my area. (If I did, I'd follow him until he left my area.)
In the event of trouble, the Crips or the Bloods would be a welcome sight against terrorists. Though, I'd prefer none of those choices.
Well, they need to simply negotiate with them, and address the root causes.
By Julius Strauss in Beslan
(Filed: 03/09/2004)
Islamic terrorists released 31 women and children yesterday from the provincial Russian school where they continue to hold more than 300 hostages.
With the siege entering its second night, the gunmen continued to refuse offers of food for the hostages, many of whom are surviving on tap water, dashing hopes of an early end to the stand-off. The authorities suggested force would not be used to end the crisis.
More than 120 children of varying ages are being held, with parents, relatives and teachers.
The terrorists, who still have not been publicly identified but are believed to be Chechen extremists or their allies, have demanded that Russian troops leave Chechnya. They have also said Moscow must cease all military operations in the war-torn republic and that rebels seized after a raid in June on nearby Ingushetia, which killed 90, be released from prison.
Outside School No 1, in Beslan, North Ossetia, where the hostages are being held in stifling heat in the gym, hundreds of soldiers, police and interior troops, with armoured personnel carriers, had formed a cordon.
There were harrowing scenes for a second day as exhausted parents and relatives broke down and wept. About 2,000 had gathered near a crisis centre.
President Vladimir Putin made his first public comments, saying that the safety of the children would be his first consideration. "Our main task is to save the life and health of those who have ended up as hostages," he told King Abdullah of Jordan in the Kremlin.
"All the actions of our forces. . . will be devoted to solving this task."
Valery Andreyev, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), in North Ossetia, said: "There is no question at the moment of opting for force. There will be a lengthy and tense process of negotiation."
The comments helped to calm nerves among relatives who fear the authorities plan to storm the building as they did when Chechens took 800 hostages in a Moscow theatre in 2002. Then 130 hostages died when special forces used a narcotic gas that disabled the rebels but killed many captives.
This time local officials were quick to reassure parents that force would not used at this early stage, although the children are growing weaker and the authorities may decide there is no option but force.
There were fears that an attack had begun in mid-afternoon when there were two explosions. It appeared that gunmen had fired shoulder-launched grenades at cars that came too close. Last night there were two further explosions.
An official in the joint-command crisis operation said that 16 people were killed on Wednesday - 12 in the school, two who died in hospital and two whose bodies still lay outside the building and could not be removed because of gunfire. Thirteen others were wounded.
At the request of the kidnappers a prominent Moscow doctor, Leonid Roshal, who treated captives during the theatre siege, arrived at the scene and assumed a leading role in the negotiations. He offered the rebels safe passage out of the school, but it was refused.
Dr Roshal said he was negotiating with "Shoikhu", the "press attache" for the group. "They are again refusing to give the children and adults there something to eat, medicine, water and food.
"Of course the freeing is a big victory, but looked at as a whole, it is a drop in the ocean. There is still a lot of work to do.
"In the event of a bad outcome, it will be war. War here, in this dangerous region between brotherly peoples - that cannot be permitted.
"I call for wisdom from the Ossetian, Ingush and Chechen peoples so that such a war never takes place. We would lose thousands of lives. We must prevent it."
The release of some hostages briefly raised spirits among parents and officials. Lev Dzugayev, an aide to the regional president, called the move "the first success".
A heavily-built soldier in camouflage kit was seen carrying a small baby to safety.
"It's all over, you're OK," the Spetsnaz special forces man whispered as he carried the wailing child, aged about three months, past an armoured vehicle.
The children were released after the intervention of Ruslan Aushev, a former president of Ingushetia republic, who is widely respected in the Caucasus.
An FSB spokesman said some terrorists had been identified and they were seeking their relatives to bring them to the school to negotiate.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, joined the condemnation of the hostage-takers and expressed sympathy with the parents and children, saying "their suffering is our suffering".
They probably come from a rough childhood. ;>)
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