At this point, I'm too sick to even comprehend which kind of beasts will shoot a little boy or a little girl in the back.
The complete blame for this carnage rests on the terrorists' shoulders.
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Fri Sep 3, 9:40 AM ET
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By Kim Murphy Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
Zalina Dzandarova cradles her son Alan as he sleeps with his small face buried against her stomach. He is the child that Dzandarova was able to save, the child she chose to save. It is the other one, Alana, her 6-year-old daughter, whose image torments her: Alana clutching her hand, Alana crying and calling after her. Alana's sobs disappearing into the distance as Dzandarova walked out of Middle School No. 1 here Thursday clutching Alan in her arms.
It is the other one, Alana, her 6-year-old daughter, whose image torments her: Alana clutching her hand, Alana crying and calling after her. Alana's sobs disappearing into the distance as Dzandarova walked out of Middle School No. 1 here Thursday clutching Alan in her arms.
Guerrillas armed with automatic rifles and explosive belts who are holding hundreds of hostages at the small provincial school in southern Russia allowed 26 women and children to leave. About a dozen mothers, like Dzandarova, were allowed to take only one child and forced to leave another behind.
"I didn't want to make this choice," a stunned-looking Dzandarova, 27, said in the reception room of her father-in-law's comfortable house a few miles away from the school. "People say they are happy that my son and I are saved. But how can I be happy if my daughter's still inside there?"
The standoff involving about 17 guerrillas probably linked to the separatist republic of Chechnya (news - web sites) and other rebellious provinces stunned a nation seemingly accustomed to war and its horrors.
"They said they would let us go only after the [Russian] troops are withdrawn from Chechnya," said Dzandarova, who said the attackers identified themselves as Chechens. "I said we have nothing to do with that, but they wouldn't listen."
Her description provided one of the first accounts of happenings inside the school, where Dzandarova said that as many as 1,000 children and parents were sitting in a gym rigged with explosives.
"The director of the school was taken to a TV where they were saying there were 354 of us in here, and the director came back and she was in a state of shock, because there were in fact many more people there," she said. "There were definitely 1,000 people in that one room [the gym, where most of the hostages are being kept]. I saw it with my own eyes."
On Wednesday, Dzandarova was taking her daughter to the first day of 1st grade with 2-year-old Alan in tow. As the students and parents began lining up grade-by-grade, they saw the attackers sweeping into the school. Dzandarova and her children ran to hide in a classroom but were later rounded up with the other hostages into the school gym.
"Everyone was ordered to sit down, and they began to set up booby traps around the perimeter, right in front of our eyes. They had lots of guns and explosives with them."
At first, she said, everyone was allowed to drink water from the tap at the school. But the hostage takers soon cut off that privilege, she said, angered that local officials, including the presidents of North Ossetia and nearby Ingushetia, did not come to the school. Without water, the dry powdered milk the guerrillas supplied for the children had to be spooned into their mouths.
In just two days, she said, the problem has become acute. "You see, the kids won't survive these negotiations," she said.
Two women who had been wearing suicide belts apparently detonated them in an adjoining room Wednesday, Dzandarova said.
"They left the gym, and all of a sudden we heard two loud explosions. We thought the storming [by Russian police] had begun. But then they told us, `Our sisters have won a victory, and there's no other cause they want to pursue.'"
When Alan began to cry with hunger, Dzandarova was allowed to join several other mothers in an adjacent changing room, which had its own water and was several degrees cooler.
But after a former local political leader visited the school Thursday, the women who were living in the changing room were told there was "good news": they would be released.
"They said pack your things quickly and take your babies with you," Dzandarova said.
Dzandarova had Alan and Alana with her in the changing room and made a snap decision to pass Alana to her 16-year-old sister-in-law, who was also a hostage. But the guerrillas saw through the ruse and refused to allow her to take the older child.
"Alana was clinging to me and holding my hand firmly. But they separated us, and said, `You go with the boy. Your sister can stay here with her.' I cried. I begged them. Alana cried. The women around us wept. One of the Chechens said, `If you don't go now, you don't go at all. You stay here with your children ... and we will shoot all of you.'"
"I didn't have time to think what I was doing," she said. "I pressed Alan even stronger to myself and I went out, and I heard all the time how my daughter was crying and calling for me behind my back. I thought my heart would break into pieces there and then."