Sounds like either a work accident, or else the Russians know how to remotely detonate the explosives of others...
5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires
Posted on 09/03/2004 8:14:17 PM PDT by neverdem
BATTLE IN BESLAN
BESLAN, Russia, Saturday, Sept. 4 - The siege of a school here in southern Russia ended Friday in panic, violence and death 52 hours after it began. At least 200 people - most of them students, teachers and parents - died, according to official reports and witnesses, after two large explosions set off pitched battles between heavily armed captors and Russian forces that continued for hours.
Ambulances, police cars and any other free vehicle rushed as many as 700 people to hospitals in frenzied convoys that careered through the streets of this small, leafy city in the republic of North Ossetia.
Scores of hostages survived, staggering from the school even as intense gunfire sputtered and grenades exploded around them. Many were barely dressed, their faces strained with fear and exhaustion, their bodies bloodied by shrapnel and gunshots. Many others never got out. Their bodies lay in the charred wreckage of Middle School No. 1's gymnasium, the roof of which had collapsed and burned, a police officer said. Many people here feared the toll would rise.
Gunfire and explosions erupted sporadically in and around the school deep into the night, as pockets of guerrillas continued to fight, including three hunkered inside a nearby building, reportedly holding an unknown number of hostages. Officials did not declare the crisis over until 11:30 p.m., more than 10 hours after the violence began.
The battle around the school - which Russian officials said erupted unexpectedly after the explosions, which still have not been fully explained - ended a siege that began when more than two dozen masked and camouflaged militants stormed the school on Wednesday as children and parents gathered for a festive first day of classes.
The number of dead and wounded far surpassed the number of hostages that were reported being held, prompting accusations here that the authorities deliberately played down the severity of the crisis. On Friday, a presidential adviser, Aslambek Aslakhanov, said for the first time that as many as 1,200 hostages might have been held; earlier, officials had put the number at around 350.
President Vladimir V. Putin, confronted with perhaps the worst crisis of his five years in office, did not immediately address what unfolded here on Friday, but arrived in the early hours of Saturday.
Other officials, in Moscow and in North Ossetia, said Russian forces had not instigated the firefights but had been forced to return fire and then to storm the school following the first explosions, which occurred just after 1 p.m.
"Taking advantage of the panic, hostages began to escape," Lev Dzugayev, a spokesman for North Ossetia's president, said in an interview. "The bandits began shooting them in the back. The special forces on our side had to cover the fleeing hostages. This is unfortunately how it happened."
Even the preliminary toll of this hostage crisis exceeded that of Russia's last one, when at least 41 armed guerrillas stormed a theater in Moscow and held hundreds of hostages in October 2002, a siege that ended with striking similarities. A daring rescue by commandos killed all the guerrillas, but also 129 of the hostages, most from nerve gas pumped into the building.
The dead this time included several Russia soldiers and security officials and at least 20 of an estimated 30 or more guerrillas. What happened to the others was unknown. At least a few were reported to have escaped.
Maj. Gen. Valery A. Andreyev, director of North Ossetia's branch of the Federal Security Service, said half of the dead fighters were foreigners, apparently from Arab countries. If verified, that would comport with the Kremlin's assertions that Chechnya's rebels were receiving aid and manpower from abroad. There were reports late Friday, unconfirmed, that three militants had been captured.
The afternoon's violence ended the fretful vigil by the relatives since Wednesday, for many families joyously, but for others grievously. Two girls who escaped, tattered and wan but apparently unhurt, emerged from a car not far from the school and raced to their family's courtyard, where they met and hugged their mother.
The morgue at the city's main hospital, though, overflowed. More than 20 bodies lay on stretchers on grass outside. Men and women filed through lifting the sheets that covered the dead, which included children and Russian soldiers or security officers. Recognition brought wrenching, piercing wails. A mother in a red and white blouse knelt on the ground, weeping as she kissed her dead daughter's face.
There were conflicting accounts of the source and the reason for the initial explosions. Some witnesses and officials cited by news agencies said the attackers had mishandled a bomb, while others said two female fighters had detonated explosive belts wrapped around them. Sergei N. Ignatchenko, the spokesman for Russia's Federal Security Service, said the explosions might have been staged by the attackers to sow confusion and to escape.
Some of the attackers, he said in an interview in Moscow, changed into civilian clothes and blended into the panicked crowd fleeing the building. He and others said some of the guerrillas, including a sniper on the roof or in a second-story window, had fired on those who fled.
"When they opened fire, we were compelled to give the order for the special forces to attack in order to save people," he said.
The carnage began even as negotiators held intermittent talks with the fighters, the morning after they had let 26 women and babies leave the school. The Kremlin had sent Mr. Aslakhanov as its envoy.
The guerrillas had also agreed to allow emergency workers to remove the bodies of those who died in the initial seizure of the school. They had just left the school when the explosions occurred, officials said.
On Friday morning, Aleksandr S. Dzasokhov, North Ossetia's president, told hundreds of relatives gathered in the city's House of Culture that the use of force was not being considered but that the behavior of the fighters, who rebuffed offers of safe passage and who refused to allow food or water into the school, was trying everyone's patience.
He said the authorities had turned to Chechnya's separatist leaders to help negotiate a peaceful end to a crisis that has transfixed and horrified a country that has endured a week of terrorist attacks and other violence stemming from the war in Chechnya.
Mr. Dzasokhov said he had received instructions to open a channel to Alsan Maskhadov, who was Chechnya's president until fleeing Russian forces in 1999. Mr. Dzasokhov and Ruslan Aushev, the regional leader who negotiated the release of 26 hostages on Thursday, both called Mr. Maskhadov's chief representative abroad, Akhmed Zakayev, on Thursday and again on Friday.
That appeared to reverse the Kremlin's policy of never negotiating with people that Mr. Putin calls terrorists. After the assault, a Kremlin spokesman, Aleksandr Smirnov, distanced Mr. Putin from the contacts, saying they were "the personal initiative" of Mr. Aushev.
Mr. Zakayev, who lives in exile in London and is wanted by the Russians on criminal charges, said in a telephone interview that he and Mr. Maskhadov were prepared to assist.
"I assured them that President Maskhadov was as distraught as they were," Mr. Zakayev said before chaos fell on this city. "He is ready without any conditions to make all efforts to save these children and resolve this crisis."
The contacts with Mr. Zakayev - the first since a fleeting meeting at a Moscow airport in November 2001 - underscored the evident desperation to end the standoff. The entreaties, obviously, came too late.
The first explosions, separated by less than a minute, sent a large, dusty white cloud over the school and were followed by a period of ferocious gunfire. Some residents joined Russian police and army forces in firing at the building; others rushed the school, under fire, to escort or carry out the fleeing hostages and take them to the hospital.
In one vehicle was a teenage girl, her black hair matted to her bloody face, her mouth open, apparently gravely wounded. "Where is the hospital?" the driver of a Mercedes screamed. Inside were two adults with children on their laps.
Teimuraz Kanukov said he had shuttled six times between the school and the hospital ferrying hostages, three wounded, three dead. His shirt was soaked with blood. "These were children," he said, "shot in the head." Eight of his own relatives were among the hostages, he said, then headed back toward the school.
By 2 p.m., officials announced that commandoes had entered the school, but fighting continued as some hostage-takers tried to escape. As helicopters circled overhead, a small group of fleeing fighters occupied a nearby house, where fighting raged for hours.
Fierce fighting broke out by a railroad crossing hundreds of feet from the school, apparently as a separate group of fighters fled southward. Half an hour later, two tanks headed toward the school, almost immediately firing heavy shells.
Russian special forces have earned a reputation for rashness in hostage situations, particularly with the storming of the Moscow theater. But evidence suggesting that Russian forces had not planned to storm the building could be seen around the two tanks, whose soldiers milled about, evidently in confusion after the initial blast, before rallying and heading into the battle.
Only after the fighting began did three helicopters appear overhead. There also seemed to be a shortage of ambulances at the scene.
Hours after the hostages streamed from the school, several fighters remained positioned on the school grounds and battled fiercely, indicating not only their suicidal determination but also a high degree of planning. "They showed up with crates and crates of ammunition," Mr. Ignatchenko said.
The violence, particularly as it involved children, induced vigilantism. There were reports of angry Ossetians attacking captured guerrillas. A man believed to be one of the fighters made his way to an alley near the school and hid under an army truck before being captured by Russian soldiers during the fighting. A crowd then set upon the man, who was in his 30's with a large black beard. The crowd beat him, tearing at his clothes, while the soldiers tried to shuffle him away.
"Everybody tried to beat him," said Khariton Valiyev, 58, who was in the crowd. "People wanted to tear him to pieces. I myself would have pulled his eyes from his head with my fingers."
That fighter's fate was not known.
C.J. Chivers reported from Beslan for this article, and Steven Lee Myers from Moscow. Viktor Klimenko contributed reporting from Beslan
Or as the New York Times calls it "escaped".
What was their headline on September 12, 2001? "Tens of Thousands Unharmed In World Trade Center Incident"?
Ah, yes, the brave fighter put upon by a mob of barbarians. I'd expect no less from the NYT
Keep your stick on the ice!
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
The Times has once again proved that it is journalistic slime.
"Can we shoot the dogs?" - http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2004/09/03/002.html
I tell you, if the durn alphabet networks don't put this story to the forefront cause it happened on foreign soil, they'll have to down the line.
The caption to the story above, is just how inhuman this is; not just the demonic manifestation of all this, but note what the story says, it was mentioned in another thread so I did not want to repost a story if somehow I missed it.
The Terrorists executed a number of men early on, threw them out of a window; and some dogs fed some on these bodies, so, the question is "Do we shoot the dogs", not speaking of the Terrorists here.
I don't read NYSLIME articles -- I glanced at it and saw a line about authorities downplaying the severity and "prompting" of accusations. Same DAMN thing happened in Moscow -- the story shifted from those that perpetrated it to how it was handled. Same DMAN thing happened with 9/11 -- the story shifted from those that perpetrated it to how America was to blame for their "feelings".
TERRORIST TERRORIST TERRORIST..and cowardly terrorists as well..not "fighter"..not "rebel"..not "seperatists"..but cowardly terrorists..to take children hostage..shoot them in the back as they try to escape..and then cowardly try to run away when real men show up is just the lowest form of life..shaved apes..or I guess slightly shaved apes..I wonder if moore still considers these cowards as George Washington, etc...????
I think it's time to turn loose the Cossacks.
It's not that it happened on foreign soil. It's that the wrong people did it. Remember, Islam is a religion of peace. If it had been white male Christians who did this, it would on every network 24/7 for weeks. But we all know that this is how the media works, don't we?
Nice to see the Sulzburger Slimes maintaining its fine tradition of reporting which it has practiced consistently since the days of Stalin and its Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Walter Duranty.
Let's see. The monsters and butchers who carried out this atrocity are referred to as "captors" , "fighters", "guerillas", "separatists", "rebels", etc. - anything but what they actually are - Islamic terrorists.
I hereby nominate the New York Times and its reporters C.J. Chivers and Steven Lee Meyers for the Walter Duranty Pulitzer Prize for Excellence in Propaganda masquerading as Journalism. Hear! Hear!
> half of the dead fighters were foreigners,
> apparently from Arab countries.
We can assume these "fighters" have in common the same "religion."
Sounds like either a work accident, or else the Russians know how to remotely detonate the explosives of others...
5 Legislative Days Left Until The AWB Expires
I think it's time to turn loose the Cossacks.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
That has already been done, in effect,
http://www.hrvc.net/htmls/reports.htm
leading to the results seen this week.
http://www.hrvc.net/news/updates.html
No doubt this approach will continue for the foreseeable future, until someone comes up with something better, or one group of combatants exterminates the other, or the belligerents give up in mutual exhaustion. In other words, like similar bloodlettings in the past.
This article is pure propaganda.
No matter what happened, these urinalists would have blamed the heroic rescuers for any injuries, and would have legitimized the perfidious devils who seized the school, tortured the children, and shot the kids in their backs. But of course I am merely understating the obvious.
Next we'll see an article in the NYT about "questions" regarding "possible prisoner abuse" of the captured terrorist vermin.
Did the article mention that the Arab countries the "fighters" came from all have no-bid contracts with Halliburton?
That fighter's fate was not known.
Russian TV news has reported that the man was torn to pieces by the crowd and lynched.
Thanks for the update. Holding so called martyrs as what some might perceive as political prisoners is asking for a headache. There is some advantage to vigilante justice.
I'm not against capital punishment, but I think life in a gulag type of prison can be a worse punishment for certain individuals.
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