"If you don't stop crying, I will shoot you'

WHEN their chance of freedom came with a massive explosion that shook School No 1, many of the children found that they could not escape.

Forced to strip to their underwear and sit shoulder-to-shoulder for three days with their knees tucked under their chins, their legs were numb and would not respond to the instinct to flee.

Hungry and dehydrated after being denied food and water by their captors, they stumbled aimlessly and weakly, their way further hampered by the debris and dust from the blast falling all around them.

The stronger ones reached the windows and began to break the glass with their fists, cutting and scratching their hands, arms and faces in their frantic efforts to get out.

And as they ran, crying and fearful, gunmen in the upper floors of the school began shooting at them.

Fatima, 15, dazed and clearly in shock, seemed to know little of her escape. “I don’t know what caused the blast, I just remember a huge bang,” she said.

“I tried to get up but I couldn’t walk or see anything. Somebody grabbed me and then I cannot remember anything until I got to hospital.”

Vitaly Makiyev, 11, was shaking as he told how policemen carried him from the building. When the gunmen arrived on Wednesday morning, Vitaly had run back into the school building, thinking he would be safe there.

“They held us for three days and they didn’t give us any food or water,” he cried.

Rosa Dudiyea told the Kommersant newspaper that the hostage-takers had at first pretended to be Russian and lured some children into the building with sweets.

“A military lorry appeared in front of the school building. People wearing camouflage and masks jumped out — I could see only their eyes and beards,” she said.

“They opened fire, everyone started running about. Some people, including myself, managed to hide behind a fence.

“Several gunmen stayed outside, near the entrance. They started screaming in very good Russian, ‘Russians, Russians, come here, don’t be afraid!’ One of the terrorists tried to lure children with chocolate.”

A woman teacher who was freed with her three-year-old daughter on the second day of the seige, but forced to leave her older children behind, said that as many as 1,500 people had been in the school when the siege began.

“It happened within two or three minutes,” she told Izvestiya newspaper. “We had begun to form a line in the school yard to listen to the headmistress’s September 1 speeches when suddenly we heard shots.

“We were herded into the sports hall. The doors into the hall were locked. People in masks broke the windows and leapt through them and then they broke the doors down. In the hall they ordered us to sit on the floor and began quickly to mine the room.

“Two large explosive devices were put in the basketball nets and then through the hall they led wires that they attached to smaller explosive devices. The whole place was mined within ten minutes.”

Atsamas Ketsoyev, 14, told The Times: “There were bombs laid out all around the gymnasium — some were hanging from the ceiling and there was one big bomb in the middle of the room. There were two women wearing explosive belts. There was also a man standing with his foot on something like a pedal or a button.”

Around this, said Atsamas, the half-naked children were forced to sit, crammed together “with our knees under our chins”.

It was hot and many had difficulty breathing even after the hostage-takers — who never removed their masks — ordered male hostages to smash windows.

The teacher who was freed said that the terrorists had frequently fired shots to stop children crying and prevent people talking. “The younger classes were terrified. They often asked to go to the toilet. They took them to the toilet in groups. If the younger ones cried the fighters shot in the air and shouted at them to be quiet. Then the young ones were silent.

“There were six or seven fighters in the hall. Two at one end, two at the other. Two or three walked around the hall. I can’t say how many there were, although when we went to the toilet I saw in the corridor there were many of them — some lying down, some walking around.

“On the first day they brought a few buckets of water from the loo. People in masks gave the babies powdered milk in cold, unboiled water.”

The teacher said that women with very young children were later moved upstairs because the crying of the babies irritated the gunmen.

She said: “A frightened child in the hall made a noise and one of the fighters seized a child and threatened to kill it if the noise didn’t stop.

“One of the terrorists grabbed a child who was crying and said ‘If this noise doesn’t stop I’ll shoot you’.”

She continued: “The terrorists said that they only demanded one thing — that troops should be taken out of Chechnya. In general they spoke little and mostly in whispers, but we heard that.

“Mostly they explained things with gestures. By their speech it was possible to make out there were Chechens and Ingush among them.”

The teacher said that during the night some of the children became more frightened and would wake crying from fitful dozes. She added: “The young ones began to cry every now and then, and the fighters shot into the air and enforced silence.

“In the morning they told us they wouldn’t give us any more water because the authorities were refusing to negotiate. When the children were taken to the loo some tried to drink from the tap. The fighters stopped this.”

Some children among those who escaped said they had become so thirsty they drank their own urine. Others had ripped leaves off pot plants in the school and eaten them.

Male hostages were held apart from the women and children and some were forced to “work” — boarding up windows and throwing out the corpses of those killed when the school was seized.

One teenager escaped when he jumped from a window out of which he had just thrown a body. He broke his leg but managed to hide until nightfall when he crawled to safety.

Hostages said they believed that the terrorists had murdered some of the wounded.

Zalina Dzandzarova, freed on the second day of the siege, said she believed that two suicide bombers had killed themselves on Wednesday, detonating their explosive belts in the corridor, where male hostages were being kept. Mrs Dzandarova said: “They took some of the injured out of the gym and finished them off right there.”

There is NO JUSTIFYING shooting little children in the back. NONE.

The aggressor sets the rules.

They say shooting little children in the back is okay. We should do it to them 10x, at least.

What would you do, read them Psalms?

ML/NJ

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True, and no justification in bombing children and their parents into fragments, either, but that's been going on too, in places like Grozny.

http://www.hrvc.net/main.htm

Odd that you mention the Psalms - - - - some of the imprecatory Psalms will fit quite well here. The Koran is not the only holy book that contains blood curdling rhetoric.

For example:

Psalm 137

1 By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down, yea, we wept
When we remembered Zion.

2 We hung our harps
Upon the willows in the midst of it.

3 For there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song,
And those who plundered us requested mirth,
Saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"

4 How shall we sing the LORD's song
In a foreign land?

5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget its skill!

6 If I do not remember you,
Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth--
If I do not exalt Jerusalem
Above my chief joy.

7 Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom
The day of Jerusalem,
Who said, "Raze it, raze it,
To its very foundation!"

8 O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed,
Happy the one who repays you as you have served us!

9 Happy the one who takes and dashes
Your little ones against the rock!

And, for personal malice, there's always good old Psalm 109

Psalm 109

Plea for Judgment of False Accusers

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

1 Do not keep silent,
O God of my praise!
2 For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful
Have opened against me;
They have spoken against me with a lying tongue.
3 They have also surrounded me with words of hatred,
And fought against me without a cause.
4 In return for my love they are my accusers,
But I give myself to prayer.
5 Thus they have rewarded me evil for good,
And hatred for my love.

6 Set a wicked man over him,
And let an accuser[1] stand at his right hand.
7 When he is judged, let him be found guilty,
And let his prayer become sin.
8 Let his days be few,
And let another take his office.
9 Let his children be fatherless,
And his wife a widow.
10 Let his children continually be vagabonds, and beg;
Let them seek their bread[2] also from their desolate places.
11 Let the creditor seize all that he has,
And let strangers plunder his labor.
12 Let there be none to extend mercy to him,
Nor let there be any to favor his fatherless children.
13 Let his posterity be cut off,
And in the generation following let their name be blotted out.

14 Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD,
And let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15 Let them be continually before the LORD,
That He may cut off the memory of them from the earth;
16 Because he did not remember to show mercy,
But persecuted the poor and needy man,
That he might even slay the broken in heart.
17 As he loved cursing, so let it come to him;
As he did not delight in blessing, so let it be far from him.
18 As he clothed himself with cursing as with his garment,
So let it enter his body like water,
And like oil into his bones.
19 Let it be to him like the garment which covers him,
And for a belt with which he girds himself continually.
20 Let this be the LORD's reward to my accusers,
And to those who speak evil against my person.

21 But You, O GOD the Lord,
Deal with me for Your name's sake;
Because Your mercy is good, deliver me.
22 For I am poor and needy,
And my heart is wounded within me.
23 I am gone like a shadow when it lengthens;
I am shaken off like a locust.
24 My knees are weak through fasting,
And my flesh is feeble from lack of fatness.
25 I also have become a reproach to them;
When they look at me, they shake their heads.

26 Help me, O LORD my God!
Oh, save me according to Your mercy,
27 That they may know that this is Your hand--
That You, LORD, have done it!
28 Let them curse, but You bless;
When they arise, let them be ashamed,
But let Your servant rejoice.
29 Let my accusers be clothed with shame,
And let them cover themselves with their own disgrace as with a mantle.

30 I will greatly praise the LORD with my mouth;
Yes, I will praise Him among the multitude.
31 For He shall stand at the right hand of the poor,
To save him from those who condemn him.

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