Russia Hostage Death Toll Said to Top 200

My Way, AP ^ | Sep 3, 4:37 PM (ET) | MIKE ECKEL

[Nachum]

BESLAN, Russia (AP) - Commandos stormed a school Friday in southern Russia and overcame separatist rebels holding hundreds of hostages as crying children, some naked and covered in blood, fled the building through explosions and gunfire. Health officials said more than 200 people died, the Interfax news agency reported.

Ninety-five victims were identified - many of them children whose shattered, bloodied bodies were placed on lines of stretchers - and Interfax quoted unnamed sources in the regional Health Ministry as saying more than 200 people were killed by fire from the militants or died from their wounds.

Hundreds of hostages survived the crisis, which in targeting children on the first day of classes crossed a boundary and amounted to a significant escalation in the decade-old Russian-Chechen conflict. More than 700 others were injured, officials said.

World governments angrily condemned the school seizure. U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday called it "another grim reminder of the length to which terrorists will go to threaten this civilized world."

Russian authorities insisted that the militants initiated Friday's violence as emergency teams entered the school, with the hostage-takers' permission, to collect the bodies of several men who had been executed earlier. It was not clear where the tragic end to the siege would leave President Vladimir Putin's tough policy on Chechnya, which to date had enjoyed broad support despite the heavy toll rebel violence has taken in recent years.

An explosives expert told NTV television that the commandos charged into the building after bombs - hung in basketball hoops by the hostage-takers - exploded. A sobbing young girl who escaped the school told NTV that a suicide bomber blew herself up in the gym where children were kept captive.

Twenty militants were killed in more than 10 hours of gunfights with security forces, 10 of them Arabs, Valery Andreyev, the region's Federal Security Service chief, said in televised comments. Putin's adviser on Chechnya, Aslanbek Aslakhanov, also said a number of the dead militants were Arab mercenaries.

After trading fire with militants holed up in the basement of a school annex, officials said the fighting was over, but that four militants remained at large. Three suspected hostage-takers were arrested trying to escape wearing civilian dress, Channel One TV reported, and Ekho Moskvy radio said a suspected female hostage-taker was detained when she approached an area hospital wearing a white robe.

The Arab presence among the attackers would bolster Putin's case that the Russian campaign in neighboring Chechnya, where mostly Muslim separatists have been fighting Russian forces in a brutal war for most of the past decade, is part of the war on international terrorism.

Late Friday, the ITAR-Tass new agency cited unspecified security sources as saying al-Qaida financed the attack on the school, and that Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev masterminded the raid. The report also said an alleged al-Qaida operative, Abu Omar as-Saif, coordinated the financing of the attack.

Regional President Alexander Dzasokhov said Friday that the hostage-takers had demanded that Russian troops leave Chechnya - the first clear indication of their demands and of a direct link between the attack on the school and the ongoing war in the neighboring region.

Officials at the crisis headquarters said 95 victims had been identified. Emergency Situations Ministry officials said 704 people were hospitalized, including 259 children. Many were badly burned.

Aslakhanov told Interfax the death toll could be "much more" than 150, and said in televised comments that the militants claimed they initially seized some 1,200 hostages, most of them children - far more than earlier estimates of 350.

The militants seized the school in North Ossetia on Wednesday, a day after a suicide bomb blast outside a Moscow subway station killed at least nine people, and just over a week after two Russian passenger jets crashed nearly simultaneously after what authorities believed were explosions on board triggered by suicide bombers, possibly Chechen women.

A hostage who escaped told Associated Press Television News that the militants numbered 28, including women in camouflage. The hostage, who identified himself only as Teimuraz, said the militants began wiring the school with explosives as soon as they took control Wednesday.

The commandos stormed the school on the third day of the crisis, moving in after about 30 women and children broke out of the building, some bloodied and screaming, after the explosions.

Russian officials said the violence came when - under an agreement reached Friday morning - emergency workers entered the school to retrieve the bodies of hostages who had been killed. A local legislator, Azamat Kadykov, had told the hostages' relatives that 20 adult men had been executed.

Andreyev said there were two large explosions, and people started running. He said militants fired at fleeing hostages, and security forces opened return fire, along with civilian residents of the town who had armed themselves. The police sapper, speaking on NTV television, said bombs hanging from basketball hoops exploded.

The bomb expert said the gym had also been rigged with explosives packed in plastic bottles strung up around the room on a cord and stuffed with metal objects.

Women escaping the building were seen fainting and others, some covered in blood, were carried away on stretchers. Many children - parched, hungry and only partly clothed because of the stifling heat in the gym - ran out screaming and begging for 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.

Two emergency services workers were killed and three wounded during the chaos, Interfax reported.

Interfax said the school's roof collapsed, possibly from the explosives. The militants had reportedly threatened to blow up the building if authorities used force. Andreyev and Aslakhanov said there had been no plans to storm the school and that authorities had pinned hopes on negotiations.

Putin had said Thursday that everything possible would be done to end the "horrible" crisis and save the lives of the children and other hostages in this town of 35,000 people.

[Agrarian]

There was never any reason to feel pity for the Chechnyan militants. Clinton's people had their own obscure reasons for wanting to go to war in the Balkans to help Muslims and to support the Chechnyan Muslims. Didn't understand it then, don't understand it now. The only good thing is that after 9/11, America understands what the Serbs and the Russians have always known -- being nice to aggressive Muslims is not the answer...

[iThinkBig]

"I hope the Russians will now question their decades-long policy of supporting the Arab/moslem world against the US and Israel."

Funny you mentioned that, I was debating that same point with someone earlier. I totally agree with you.

[fire_eye]

When the Romans were unable to reach an accomodation with an enemy, and had found the enemy so intractable as to be incapable of keeping a peace agreement, they would, after conquering, kill every living thing in the enemy's territory: men, women, children, dogs, horses - everything.

The Romans did not do this out of savagery, but because they had determined over the course of hundreds of years that such measures were the only effective means of causing barbarians to fear Rome enough that they would stop committing depradations on the fringes of the Empire.

[A Jovial Cad]

I agree. My response to the post in question was more a rhetorical "slap on the back" or "right on" than anything else: I've NEVER sympathized with the Chechen's, though I must confess I haven't really paid the whole mess there that much attention until now. I do know that after 9/11 President Bush called Premier Putin to discuss the War On Terror and Putin basically said something to the effect that Russia was "already on the case" (not an actual quote, just something to that effect) in Chechnya.
As to the deal in the Balkans, I offer a different response: I have painstakingly avoided any commentary on the Serbian/Balkans/Clinton Kosovo policy for precisely two reasons:
1. I don't know enough about the entire issue to offer an honest, coherent, opinion.
2. I have seen enough flame-laden threads about the Balkans matter at FR that I'm not sure *I want* to know enough to come down on one side or the other concerning what, to me, is not a too terribly important region of the world vis-a-vi the WOT.
That said, I wholeheartedly endorse this observation: *being nice to aggressive Muslims is not the answer...*
I agree 100% with that statement.

[iThinkBig]

Hmmm. Perhaps, but if so I believe it will be short-lived. Putin is taking them in the wrong direction and squashing freedom of speech. An example is this Yukos ordeal. It tells any intelligent investor that the free market is still a very long ways away in Russia.

I think this kind of attacks on her soil make the bear want to go back to the communism days very much.

[iThinkBig]

Now if we only had the Russian leadership thinking the same way as this guy!

[FITZ]

There was never any reason to feel pity for the Chechnyan militants.

"Chechan militants" doesn't explain what the 10 Arabs were doing there --- half the killed "militants" end up being Arabs. Maybe Chechans are like Black Muslims --- recruited by the Arabs to be used when Arabs decide the time is right.

[iThinkBig]

To me, the mulsim clerics already are a huge problem. You never know when one them will decide to pick up arms and join the global Jihad or simply began preaching that kind of message.

[oyez]

As I have said before, there is no earthly reason for this event to have happened.

[Agrarian]

I remember some of those flame-laden threads, and want to avoid those, too! The Balkans is a place where you sometimes wish all the sides could lose. The roots of that conflict are in the 400 year Ottoman occupation of the region, and there was and is no satisfactory solution, which is why I always felt we should just stay out of it, and take neither side.

I don't know if the Balkans are important in the WOT or not, to be honest. But the amount of money poured into Bosnia and Kosovo from the Middle East during that conflict by the same "relief organizations" that we have become familiar with in the post 9/11 era leaves no doubt as to the importance that many aggressive-minded Muslims themselves placed on their toe-hold in Europe.

My overall point is that the Clinton administration had no concept of the implications of Islamic militancy as a world-wide force, and didn't calculate this into their decisions. I don't think that the WOT can be separated from the larger phenomenon of Islamic expansionism (not that I think that's what you're saying). I don't know whether the current administration agrees with this, but even if they did, they wouldn't be able to state it publically.

[Agrarian]

Yes, this is indeed the most disturbing part of this incident, but not surprising. Jihad is a world-wide phenomenon that isn't restricted to Arabs, though. In Arab Iraq, you will find Asian Muslims helping out, in Indonesia you will find Arabs helping out, and in Afghanistan we even found an American Muslim helping out.

The Arab world seems to be the seed-bed of extremism, but the rest of the Muslim world, regardless of ethnic background, appears to contribute its share of foot-soldiers to the cause, too. Islam is not a religion of peace, and the tendency of its adherents to be drawn into violence against non-Muslims (or at least to silently tolerate it) is no accident, but I do agree with the assertion that most Muslims just want food on the table and a roof over their heads, just like every other human being.

[A Jovial Cad]

I pretty much endorse what you say as far as I know about the matter which, I must stress, is not all that much. I do know that the fuse which sparked the conflagration of WWI was lit in Serbia, with the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand, and that the Ottoman Empire was pretty much shattered after that conflict. I *didn't* know that they'd been there for 400 years--thanks for that info.
The entire area just seems to be a troubled--and troublesome--region, all the way back to the times of the Roman Empire. A place best avoided, IMHO, unless critical U.S. interests are at stake.
Hope you don't mind me changing the subject, but I just noticed your tag line. How good a chance do you think Thune has? I've never been to South Dakota, but I'd sure consider sending his campaign a donation if it looks like it's going to be close. Thanks.

[Agrarian]

Thune can definitely win. Daschle is worried, and should be. Money is important, but at this point I think that a Bush visit to SD (not to campaign for Thune so much as to campaign for himself and motivate the Republican base to turn out) will do the most good of all. That, and pray...

A Daschle defeat would help create the impression of a larger Bush mandate, that's why it's so important, I think.

[xJones]

What kind of primitive savages worship a stinking rock? Really!

The Hajar al-Aswad (the Black Stone) is not your average rock, it has a weird history. The animist Arabs worshipped that meteorite long before Islam. Mohammed simply took possession it, kissed it, and it's still being effectively worshiped in the annual Islamic rituals.

Now days it's set in gold and hangs on a wall of the Holy Kaaba. Muslims making hajj are supposed to try and kiss it like Mohammed allegedly did, or at the very least wave at it as they do the ritual 7 circles around the Kaaba. (I swear I'm not making any of this up, you can research it for yourself.)

.

According to Islamic lore the meteorite dropped at Adam's feet after he was expelled from Eden. It was white originally, but turned black from absorbing the sins of men.

BTW, if you ever wondered what else goes on during the hajj after they try to kiss that filthy rock, it gets even more bizarre. The faithful get to run seven times between Mt. Safa and Mt. Marwah (which aren't mountains, just rises in the desert), and then they proceed to Mina, a few miles from Mecca. That's where they do "The Throw". They throw pebbles over their shoulders at 3 stone pillars that represent devils.

You can imagine how many accidents and deaths occur annually to Muslim pilgrims during all this, particularly because the Saudi hosts aren't exactly famous for their organizational abilities.:)

[Michael2001]

My prayers and sympathy are with the Russian people

[eno_]

To me, the mulsim clerics already are a huge problem.

You are saying "Islam is the problem." And, you are correct. "Moderate" Islam exists only in theory.

[Drammach]

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyclopaedia/hutchinson/m0046651.html
Alania
Autonomous republic in the south of the Russian Federation, on the border with Georgia; area 8,000 sq km/3,088 sq mi; population (1992) 695,000. A new constitution was adopted in 1994 and the republic took its former name of Alania. The capital is Vladikavkaz (formerly Ordzhonikidze). Alania lies on the northern slopes of the central Caucasus, and its main rivers are the Terek, the Gizeldon, and the Ardon. Its industries include mining and metallurgy (lead, zinc, silver), maize processing, timber and woodwork, textiles, building materials, distilleries, food processing, and hydroelectric power generation.

History
Alania, part of the region of Ossetia, was annexed by Russia in 1774. Under the Soviets, it was made part of the Mountain Peoples’ Autonomous Republic in 1920, became the North Ossetian Autonomous Oblast in 1924, and an autonomous republic from 1936. The republic was occupied by German forces in 1942.

The inhabitants are primarily Sunni Muslims.