Posted on 09/05/2004 9:55:54 AM PDT by IsraelBeach
Israel to Russia: Tears For Children Murdered by Islamic Terrorism
By Joel Leyden
Israel News Agency
Jerusalem----September 5......Just days away from the third anniversary of the 9/11 Islamic terror attacks against the US, Islamic terrorism has again lifted its ugly, barbaric face. Wails of mourning echoed through the streets of a Russian town this morning as a duty officer at the North Ossetian health ministry said that over 350 Russian civilians, mostly young children, had been murdered. More than 540 people were wounded. Medical officials said 423 people remained hospitalized, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
The Islamic terrorists seized a school on Wednesday on what was to have been the first day of class after summer vacation. Children, along with parents who had been dropping them off, were herded into the gym, which the terrorists quickly wired with explosives.
Russian officials said the bloodshed began when explosions were apparently set off by the terrorists possibly by accident - as emergency workers entered the school courtyard to collect the bodies of hostages killed in the initial raid Wednesday.
Hostages fled during the blasts, and the militants opened fire on them, prompting security forces to return fire and commandos to move in, officials said.
The explosions tore through the roof of the gymnasium, sending wreckage down on hostages, killing many. Many survivors emerged naked covered in ashes and soot, their feet bloody from jumping barefoot out of broken windows to escape.
"Israel, which has been struggling against terrorism for many years, stands alongside the Russian people and sends its condolences. There is no justification for terrorism and this is the time for the free, just and humanitarian world to unite and fight this horrific plague, which acknowledges neither borders nor limitations."
- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon responded this morning saying: “Last Friday, the entire world was shocked by the horrific massacre that was perpetrated by terrorists in Russia. It has been proven again that terrorism does not distinguish between blood and blood, between adults and children. Israel, which has been struggling against terrorism for many years, stands alongside the Russian people and sends its condolences. There is no justification for terrorism and this is the time for the free, just and humanitarian world to unite and fight this horrific plague, which acknowledges neither borders nor limitations.”
Israel has long battled Islamic terrorism, which has targeted Israeli children in restaurants, shopping centers and buses. Israel has also witnessed sniper attacks against Israeli babies, an atrocity for which is difficult to articulate. Palestinian terrorists murdered 4 young Jewish children and their pregnant mother last May. The terror attack targeted the family vehicle while it was traveling on the road that leads to the Gaza Strip settlement bloc of Gush Katif. The Palestine terrorists arrived by car from the nearby Palestinian village of Dir al Ballah and began to fire at passing Israeli vehicles, consequently killing the mother and her four children. After spraying the station wagen with bullets, the Palestinian terrorists walked up to the 4 terrified little girls and shot each one of them twice in the head, police said. The 8-month-old pregnant mother was shot in her belly at point blank range as she tried to cover her children. An Israel Defense Forces jeep arrived at the scene and engaged in gunfire with the terrorists, killing them.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom also expressed his condolences on the massacre in Russia, saying the attack on innocent civilians proves that terror has no borders. Both Sharon and Shalom suggested that Israel and Russia join forces in the global battle against Islamic terrorism. The Islamic terror attacks against New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001 claimed 2,752 lives.
A shaken President Vladimir Putin went on national television Saturday to make a rare and candid admission of Russian weakness in the face of an "all-out war" by terrorists. He said Russians must mobilize against terrorism and promised wide-ranging reforms to toughen security forces and purge corruption.
"We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten," he said in a speech aimed at addressing the grief, shock and anger felt by many after a string of terrorist attacks that have killed some 480 people in the past two weeks, apparently in connection with the war in Chechnya .
Dozens of men dug graves in a football field-sized tract next to the Beslan cemetery on Sunday morning, while surveyors across the road marked out new plots with wooden stakes and string. Coffin lids stood outside the entrances to apartment buildings, along with wooden planks bearing the names of victims who were to be buried in funerals beginning later Sunday. Wailing could be heard from courtyards where families were preparing ritual meals.
The regional health ministry said 180 people were missing after the three-day ordeal, which ended in a bloody wave of explosions and gunfire Friday when militants set off bombs rigged in the school gymnasium and commandos stormed the building. Russian media speculated that some of the missing could be among the wounded who were brought to various hospitals in the southern Russian region.
Outside the shattered gymnasium on Sunday, Svetlana Debloyeva, 42, clutched a picture of her 11-year-old son Zaur, one of those unaccounted for. "I lost my boy," she cried as she approached the building, where she had been squeezed in among the more than 1,100 hostages.
Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said Saturday that 35 attackers - heavily-armed and explosive-laden men and women who were reportedly demanding independence for Chechnya - were killed in 10 hours of battles that shook the area around the school with gunfire and explosions.
Russian Deputy Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said Sunday that according to the latest information, 32 terrorists had been involved in the hostage-taking, and the bodies of 30 of them had been found, the Interfax news agency reported.
Including the terrorists, at least 380 people died in the massacre.
Photo: Reuters
Three suspects were detained in Beslan on Saturday and they took part in identifying the militants, Interfax reported, citing unnamed law enforcement sources.
Putin took a defiant tone, acknowledging Russia's weaknesses, but blaming it on the fall of the Soviet Union, foreign foes seeking to tear apart Russia and on corrupt officials. He said Russians could no longer live "carefree" and must all confront terrorism. Measures would be taken, Putin promised, to overhaul the law enforcement organs, which he acknowledged had been infected by corruption, and tighten borders.
"We are obliged to create a much more effective security system and to demand action from our law enforcement organs that would be adequate to the level and scale of the new threats," he said.
North Ossetian Interior Minister Kazbek Dzantiyev submitted his resignation on Sunday morning, said Alexander Andreyev of the southern regional branch of the Russian Interior Ministry.
"After what happened in Beslan, I don't have the right to occupy this post as an officer and as a man," ITAR-Tass quoted Dzantiyev as saying.
Channel One television quoted a regional spokesman as saying that the resignation had not yet been accepted.
Three Russian children succumbed to injuries taking the toll in Russia's school hostage crisis in Beslan in North Ossetia to 333 as parents and relatives continued to search for the 260 missing. The ministry earlier noted that the bodies of 323 people were carried out by rescuers from the school building while another seven victims died in hospitals.
Parents and relatives of 260 hostages of the bloody drama in Beslan school are still unable to trace their dear ones. However, reports quoting morgue officials said the toll in the bloody drama in Beslan city climbed to at least 394.
In a parallel development North Ossetia's Interior Minister Kazbek Dzantiyev has resigned accepting the responsibility for flaws in security leading to the Beslan school siege.
In all there were 1,184 hostages inside the school. Four forty eight are still in hospitals of which 69 were in critical condition, official spokesman for the North Ossetian administration Lev Dzugayev said.
Dzugayev did not rule out that many injured were still unconscious and they could not be identified. Scores of dead bodies, taken away to nearby regional capital Vladikavkaz for forensic analysis are also yet to be identified. Meanwhile, first hostage victims are to be buried in Beslan today.
President Vladimir Putin has declared national mourning on Monday and Tuesday, when most of the terror victims would be buried.
Meanwhile, the authorities have nabbed three suspected accomplices of school hostage-takers in Beslan,, including a woman. One of them was on wanted in connection with two terror blasts in North Ossetia earlier this year and daring militant raid on the capital of neighbouring Ingushtia's capital Nazran on June 22, ITAR-TASS reported.
Addressing the nation on television yesterday, a day after the school hostage crisis in southern Russia ended in carnage, Putin admitted failings by law enforcement agencies and said he would act to bolster the country's security.
Children at the school had been celebrating the start of the new school year with parents and staff on Wednesday morning when they were seized by an armed group demanding independence for Chechnya.
The crisis ended in carnage on Friday as Russian troops moved in to end the siege after explosions were heard inside the building.
Recently the Palestinian journalists union banned journalists from photographing Palestinian children carrying weapons or taking part in activities by terror groups, saying the pictures harm the Palestinian cause.
Palestinian terrorists have no regard for the lives of Israeli children or their own. In the above pictures, Palestinian babies are abused and dressed as "martyrs". Palestinian children are used as "human shields" as terrorists fire automatic weapons and throw grenades at Israelis behind them.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate also called on Palestinian factions and their military wings such as Yassar Arafat's Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad to stop using children in their activities. Children carrying weapons or dressed up as suicide bombers have been frequently seen at rallies and marches in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the nearly two years of the current conflict. Israel has charged that Palestinians are misusing children as pawns in the conflict; the Palestinians counter that Israeli forces target children with gunfire during riots.
Recently six children armed with M16 and Kalashnikov rifles took part in a pro-Iraqi rally in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
Tawfik Abu Khousa, deputy chairman of the syndicate, said such pictures harmed the image of the Palestinian people and the credibility of Palestinian journalists.
"We have decided to forbid taking any footage of armed children, because we consider that as a clear violation of the rights of children and for the negative effects these pictures have on the Palestinian people," he said.
In the statement issued by the syndicate it said footage of armed children served "the interests of Israel and its propaganda against the Palestinian people." The union threatened to boycott militant groups who use children and masked men in their activities.
In a statement, the Foreign Press Association expressed "deep concern" over the decision by the syndicate and its threats of sanctions against journalists, local and foreign, who disregard the ban.
"While we share the expressed desire to defend the rights of children, limiting coverage of legitimate news events and elements of stories is not the proper way to achieve this goal," it said.
Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based international watchdog of the media, called on the Palestinian Journalists Union to reverse its ban on local and foreign journalists taking pictures of Palestinian children carrying weapons or wearing military uniforms.
The Palestinian union said such pictures are "a flagrant violation of the rights of children."
However, Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert M nard called the ban "a misguided way to protect children aimed at misinforming the world about the real situation in the occupied territories.
It is also very odd, to say the least, for a journalists' union to forbid journalists to do their job."
One senior official in Israel said that in the past the Russians "isolated their problem, said it was a Russian problem that they can handle themselves. Now it seems they realize that in Chechnya, like here, you have local organizations supported from outside sources residing in places where they have immunity and sanctuary."
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom issued a statement Saturday saying there is no difference between the twin suicide attacks in Beersheba, Israel last week and the attack in Beslan, and that it is incumbent on the international community to condemn these attacks and to unite in the war on terrorism."
Israeli Tourism Minister Gideon Ezra already offered a few preliminary suggestions for action to be taken against the plague of terrorism, including the drastic proposal of eliminating flights to and from countries that promote and enable terrorist activity. He strongly advocated cooperation in the international community in its fight against terror.
"There should be international collaboration between all the countries who are combating terrorism. We should halt air traffic to and from countries that support terrorism in order to hinder terrorism from reaching its destination," he said.
"Israel is ready to aid any country who wishes to fight terrorism and contribute from its own past experience, and we can learn from other countries as well.
Israeli Labor Minister Ehud Olmert, however, called to Israel to exercise caution in its gallant offers of aid. He agreed that Israel could definitely play an important role in the world's struggle against terrorism, but warned that it needs to be done in an appropriate and fitting manner. Israel, he said, should not to jump ahead of itself by offering assistance so recklessly.
On Monday Sharon will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to discuss cooperation in the anti-terrorist fight. Lavrov will arrive in Israel, a leg of his Mideast tour, on Sunday evening. He will also meet with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom and President Moshe Katzav.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry offered any kind of medical aid to Beslan former hostages on Sunday. The ministry said Israel could send medical specialists or medicines to Russia.
With the Associated Press
ISRAEL NEWS AGENCY
The allies of Good vs axis of evil
The should never include the terrorist body count with those of the innocent victims!!!
There are lots of Russian Jews and quite a few Russians who are not Jewish living in Israel. Hopefully the barbarity of Beslan will make Russia have greater appreciation for Israel's self-defense measures against terrorism.
I agree with. The terrorist should be counted as animals.
Look out chechens Your worst nightmare may soon be in process.
Finally, a journalist who gets it!!!
Not even animals. Animals at least don't consciously kill children and sadistically enjoy it.
I have yet to see where France stands on this incident. Where's Jacque's show of support against terrorism and condolence to the Russian people?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.