It's time again ...
Go get em Putin.
Posted on 09/03/2004 5:35:31 PM PDT by saquin
[Pupils were lured by chocolate then starved and threatened by terrorists]
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.”
..."The Russians brought this upon themselves."...
Just like we brought on 9-11?
DEAR GOD!!!!!! These pictures are horrifying.
This issue is obviously not important -- didn't you know a category 2 hurricane is off our coast and Bill Clinton has a planned surgery. Please stick to topics deemed acceptable by the MSM.
No, but then I've heard a reporter from Britain blame the Russians for their treatment of the Chechens. I've heard similar sentiments from our own talking heads.
Will this "terrorism is the fault of everyone except the actual terroists" BS ever stop?
Thanks for the history.
Good evening.
I believe it was Golda Meir who said something like, "There will be peace in the middle east when Muslms love their children more than they hate Jews." I think it can apply here and, clearly, that time is far off.
Michael Frazier
It's time again ...
Go get em Putin.
If you find out, let me know.
You got it bro. They won't play this thing up for precisely the reason you gave. Contrast this to how much tube time was devoted to Monica's War the night before the impeachment vote. Those media a%%holes, along with the Michael Moore-ites, are on their side! They don't want the US to win.
But we won't let that happen.
Thank you.........appreciate the links......
I'm a relative newbie, trying to catch up.
Appreciate it.
I have a pair of 7 year old twins..and I wouldn't mind standing in front of their school with my over and under shotgun...I know I am in Louisiana..but if I were in lower russia..with the cowards who are near by..I would..
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.
This is evil. You MAY hate evil.
Pray for our country. Pray for GW, pray for our children, PLEASE pray for all of these Russian children and their families.
Your point has some merits but honestly, when was the last time you EVER heard of an attack directly on a school full of children? Last time I heard of even something remotely so grotesque was Adolf Hitler.
I think this deserves the same attention we gave Iraq to get rid of Saddam.
How could we not go help with this situation? It's seems just as bad as Iraq to me.
If Iraq war is justified, this seems also.
Wonder if Russia would like our assistance?
Actually, I think it would have happened either way. Al Queda is now part of the operational plan against Russia. Bin Laden is still alive and would not forget his Russian enemies from Afghanistan so quickly.
That is Satan's plan to rule, isn't it? He gets his 3 1/2 years according to the bible. Imigine what it will like during that time?
God Almighty...
I cannot accept this
Actually, the United States did condemn the harshness and brutality of the Russian Chechnya operations. However, we learned after 911 that once a group of terrorist begin using an entire country as a base, the entire country may become a target to find and destroy the few hundred enemies out of potential millions of innocents. It comes down to which innocents we choose to allow to die, ours or theirs. The Russians have known this for years now.
Their is no other way to get these murderers. I side with that other poster who pointed out that the Chechnians had their chance at their own country, like Arafat and the Palis, they blew it.
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