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.”
Allah is Great!!!
Witness his great works....
Gee, I feel all warm and fuzzy about our Muslim brothers and sisters.... someone should have a meeting about this and ask the Germans and French how this should be handled. Then maybe appoint a commision to see how the United States should handle the situation if this occurs in our country.... nah!!! The Muslims don't really want to hurt us... just ask the Democrats.
I like your thinking!!!
Thanks for the correction!!!
Anyway, this is the kind of collaboration needed right now...
Let me get this straight. You are trying to justify the murder of children by having us 'understand them'? NO SELL.
Has the Vatican weighed in on this yet?
Then I read this....
Where can we send money to make sure our guys get the best defense money can buy?
I'm in an unusually torturous mood this evening. Do a Loraina Bobbett prior to the Nick Berg.
Nuke all the towelheads!! Time to rid the planet of these sub-humans.
I hope you told her that we can donate the timing devices for the nukes if needed.
No mercy . . .
Words fail to do justice to the rage I feel towards these animals.
YOU TAKE A DAMN HARD LOOK AT THIS KERRY.....DO YOU STILL WANT TO FIGHT A MORE SENSITIVE WAR ON TERROR.
In the words of General Franks, we owe it to these people to kill them, en masse. Extirpate them from the soil of God's green earth, if we have to do it one by one.
Someone has to invent an adjective for these people, because coward sets the bar way too high.
.. and orally introduce each other prior to meeting the virgins.
NOBODY has weighed in on this yet except the EU sissy freaks
Heartbreaking story and photos. God Bless all the captives, the children, parents, the teachers and school officials and all the families affected as well as those who tried to rescue them.
"There is NO JUSTIFYING shooting little children in the back. NONE. Don't you teach your kids, when they are frustrated -- "Still you may not break the door down?" Everybody gets frustrated, everyone gets wronged sometime, EVERYONE has a beef -- IF they hone it and polish it and love it and cherish it, they can always justify hurting someone in response. It is the default mode of human behavior. They are lily-livered soulless cowards of the worst sort."
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
You are quite correct that there is no justifying the slaughter of children (or large numbers of adult civilians for that matter). Yet that has been going on in this region for years. Check out some of the other victims.
http://www.hrvc.net/main.htm
It would be interesting to hear some practical suggestions for ending the slaughter (as opposed to righteous posturing about the horror of it all, and slogans that amount to little more than angry bellowing). "Bomb the Chechens back to the stone age!?" Sorry, that's already been tried with the results you see this week.
At the moment, blood lust appears to be reigning supreme on all sides, so it seems likely that the bloodletting will continue for some time. Unfortunate.
Prayers for all of them. The pictures are heart-breaking.
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
Who cares? Bill Clinton is having heart surgery sometime in the future, and I want wall to wall endless meaningless chatter about it flooding my newschannels.
< / angry bitter extreme sarcasm >
This story is as big as 911, because the technique can and will be used to penetrate and inflict mass casualties anywhere in the US and the rest of the world, a savage escalation. The myopic simpleton fools at Fox News are little better than the rest of the media bastards on this story.
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