Posted on 09/03/2004 10:04:07 AM PDT by ezfindit
Russians Storm School; 150 May Be Dead By MIKE ECKEL, Associated Press Writer
BESLAN, Russia - Commandos stormed a school Friday in southern Russia and battled separatist rebels holding 1,200 hostages, as crying children, some naked and covered in blood, fled through explosions and gunfire. An official said the death toll could be significantly higher than 150.
Three of the separatist rebels were reportedly still blockaded in a school basement, trading fire with security forces. A Federal Security Service official said militants were still holding hostages — children among them.
Hours after much of the school was secured late Friday afternoon, a large explosion erupted from the school toward nightfall, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Ten militants were killed in the violence, including nine Arabs, an aide to President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) said, according to the Interfax news agency. The Arab presence among the attackers would support Putin's contention that al-Qaida terrorists were involved in the Chechen conflict, where Muslim fighters have been fighting Russian forces in a brutal a war of independence for most of the past decade.
The chaotic climax to the hostage standoff began when explosions collapsed part of the school roof and gunfire erupted from inside the building where the militants, some with explosives strapped to their bodies, stormed the school Wednesday moring.
The militants — demanding independence for nearby Chechnya — kept the hostages, mostly women and children, in the sweltering gymnasium, refusing to let in food or water.
"They didn't let me go to the toilet for three days, not once. They never let me drink or go to the toilet," Teimuraz, the escaped hostage told APTN.
After the hostage-takers fled, more than 100 bodies were found in the gymnasium, some apparently killed when part of the school's roof collapsed in the explosion that prompted the Russian security forces to move in.
A Putin aide said the total death toll could be singificantly more than 150 people. An estimated 520 people were wounded, health officials said. The regional health minister earlier reported that at least 218 children were wounded.
Aslanbek Aslakhanov, Putin's top aide on Chechnya, said security forces did not plan to storm the building, but were prompted to move when the hostage-takers set off explosions early Friday afternoon. Witnesses said the militants opened fire on fleeing hostages and then began to escape themselves.
Gunfire rang out for hours as security forces chased hostage-takers, who split into small groups as they fled. Interfax and the ITAR-Tass news agency reported the three militants holed up in the basement may include the head of the group. Another group took refuge in a nearby house where tanks moved in.
Huge columns of smoke rose from the school. Windows were shattered, part of roof was gone and another part was charred. Commandos, residents and journalists scurried around the building and soldiers climbed inside through a lower floor window, all the glass missing.
People ran through the streets, and the wounded were carried off on stretchers. An Associated Press reporter saw ambulances speeding by, the windows streaked with blood. Four armed men in civilian clothes ran by, shouting, "A militant ran this way."
Soldiers and men in civilian clothes carried children — some naked, some clad only in underpants, some covered in blood — to a temporary hospital set up behind an armored personnel carrier. One child had a bandage on her head, others had bandaged limbs. Some women, newly freed from the school, fainted.
The children drank eagerly from bottles of water given to them once they reached safety. Many of the children were naked or only partly clothed because of the stifling heat in the gymnasium.
"I am helping you," a man dressed in camouflage told a crying girl. Women gathered around, trying to soothe her, saying "It's all right. It's all right."
A cameraman for the British network ITN reported seeing around 100 bodies in the gym. The correspondent for Russia's Interfax news agency reported that there were dozens of bodies in the school, including about 100 in the gym, and that some were killed when the building's roof collapsed from an explosion before the main assault began.
The White House branded the hostage-taking "barbaric" and "despicable" and said responsibility for dozens of lost lives rests with the terrorists. "The United States stands side-by-side with Russia in our global fight against terrorism," spokesman Scott McClellan said. ...
Militants opened fire on fleeing hostages and security forces returned fire. Once the hostage-takers sought to escape, Russian officials apparently made the decision to storm the building.
The militants had reportedly threatened to blow up the building if authorities tried to storm it, but all indications suggested the explosions began before the assault. Russian officials repeatedly said they were not planning to invade and had earlier won the release of 26 hostages through negotiations. Negotiators said the hostage-takers had repeatedly refused offers of food and water througout the standoff.
"They are very cruel people, we are facing a ruthless enemy," said Leonid Roshal, a pediatrician involved in the negotiations. "I talked with them many times on my cell phone, but every time I ask to give food, water and medicine to the hostages they refuse my request."
...this is not new. chechnya was always a muslim wahhibist enterprise. so was the war in the balkans.
and WE sided with the wrong group under clinton.
No it's not new. The Russians have been fighting the muslim wahhibist enterprise since their invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Looking back, did we side with the wrong group under Reagan?
I see you are still spouting your baloney "Religion of Peace" spiel. If you post here you should expect to be called on your position and respond to it if not take a hike back to the middle ages...where the Muslims seem stuck in the sand. Figure it out, right or wrong good people are not going to take much more of this terrorism and anyone who thinks otherwise is ignorant, stupid or both.
I'll try again:
What do you propose Nepal do in order to stop further atrocities against their citizens and also to punish the terrorists in Iraq? How about the terrorism in Russia?
Alberuni is a muslim sympathizer.
Is this the same group who blew up the two planes last week?
"Looking back, did we side with the wrong group under Reagan?" No we just screwed them when the Soviets left.
I believe they are related, both "working" to promote Chechen independence.
When you are in a fight it's the aggressor who initially sets the parameters of the fight. If you don't match those parameters and then some you are going to lose the fight. The difference is that once we have ended the fight we go back to being ourselves. If it were a matter of becoming indistinguishable from them then we would leave that fight and head out looking for another. When you decline to use whatever methods necessary to end a fight as soon as possible you are simply accepting a higher toll for the battle/war than if you had ended it quickly. Several hundred thousand people lost their lives when we used atomic bombs against Japan. The alternative was an invasion of their homeland and the lives lost would have numbered in the millions, many of the allied forces. If by ending that war as quickly as possible meant we had lowered ourselves to their level we would have used nuclear weapons in Korea. Fighting fire with fire does not make one an arsonist.
That sort of propaganda might work on the ignorant, but unfortunately not with me. When was the last time Russians invaded a school and killed hundreds?
As for other venues, any community which tolerates killers among them and does nothing about eliminating them is not "innocent". And as for the children, the killers and their enablers, the adults, are the ones condemning them to a certain death, not their victims.
Even the Geneva Conventions acknowledge this.
Some information:
http://www.apostatesofislam.com/main.htm
http://www.prophetofdoom.net/
The gates of heaven and hell open up today.
I feel for the families of those who have lost anyone but expecially children.
Islam is a death cult.
In 1995, the Chechens were granted their autonomy, if not independence, by Boris Yeltsin. Chechen gangs proceeded to terrorize every bordering region, invaded hospitals, killed hundreds and turned that region of Russia into total mayhem. How on earth do you negotiate with such a bunch, much less treat them as civilized people? Since when did Russian troops occupy a school, make ridculous demands, then slaughter hundreds of children and their parents? Also, we need recognize the Chechens were Hitler's prime allies in the Caucusus. They do NOT have an innocent history.
Russia NOW.
is NOT the equivalent of the soviet communists.
we were right to dethrone communism.
once the soviet union disbanded, we SHOULD have immediately sided with the new FREE nations, against the very same pukes we helped overthrow the soviets in afghanistan.
the communist threat was at the head of the list.
muslims should be next.
and they are.
reagan was NOT wrong.
Clinton was wrong for siding against the orthodox christians and with the muslims in the former yugoslavia.
Milosevek should probably been given a medal.
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