Posted on 09/05/2004 5:58:59 PM PDT by blam
What did we do to deserve this?
By Tom Parfitt in Beslan
(Filed: 06/09/2004)
They came in their hundreds to freshly dug graves on a meadow next to the main cemetery to bury the victims of the carnage.
One funeral procession after another moved slowly through the crowds, the dead wrapped in white cloth and carried in open coffins.
Weeping relatives witness Fatima Tetova's overwhelming grief at the burial of her children
In the first grave, two young men were shovelling clods of earth on to their 50-year-old father, one of the oldest to die as three days of unimaginable terror came to its bloody end on Friday at School No 1 in Beslan in the Russian republic of North Ossetia.
Beyond, an area bigger than a football pitch was covered with more graves and piles of earth. At least 25 had been dug and plots had been marked out for dozens more.
At each grave, a family gathered with wreaths and flowers, holding portraits above their heads.
One showed a girl who must have been about nine in a starched lace tiara. Another an elderly man in a skull cap.
A woman in a Moscow church prays for the people of Beslan
"The whole world now knows this little town. It would have been better if no one knew where Beslan was," one man said softly.
Amid a steady hum of wailing, the first dozen coffins were lowered into the ground. Muslims and Christians were buried side by side as a brass band moved from one funeral to the next. An old man played a drum and a soldier in uniform a tuba.
In keeping with local tradition, the funeral processions began in the town.
Crowds of mourners gathered around the coffins, laid out in the courtyards of crumbling Soviet-era blocks of flats.
The women stood tight around the coffins, one leading the mourning with cries of grief as others clasped each other. The men stood in rows to greet the family elders, some cursing the Chechen terrorists under their breath.
A family stare into the shattered remains of the school gym
One man in a black suit with tattoos on his hands said: "Bitches, cowards. They'd rather torture children or hide like rats in a hole than fight with real men."
Another, in shirtsleeves, said: "They are jackals, not humans. Let them tell us next time they want to attack a kindergarten.
"We will arm our children. Then we'll see what happens."
The kidnappers placed bombs in the basketball hoops as they herded an estimated 1,200 hostages into the gym after storming the school on Wednesday morning, the first day of term.
They refused children water, forcing them to drink their own urine. They shot hostages in the back when they tried to escape on Friday after two bombs exploded - probably accidentally - in the gym. Many of the victims died in the fireball that followed.
At the school, dozens of well-wishers laid red carnations and plastic bottles of water, a stark symbol of how the children were treated.
Others walked through the burnt out buildings, in tears, embracing.
Anzhela Varziyeva, 32, was shot in the back during the siege after taking her seven-year-old son Mairbek for his first day at school. Mairbek was injured and is still in hospital.
Relatives told how Mairbek had offered his captors 10 roubles (20p), all the money he had, and asked to be released.
Anzhela's mother, Zarima, mourned yesterday. "God, why did this happen?" she cried. "No mother should outlive her children."
Medics in ambulances sat at one edge of the burial field to help those overcome with grief. On the other side were pallets piled with bricks for lining the sides of grave pits.
On each grave was an Orthodox cross or a simple plank, the name of the dead person burned into the wood. Some bodies were completely wrapped, perhaps too disfigured by the falling debris or gunfire that killed them to be shown publicly. Others had their faces exposed. But many had crushed or distorted features, crudely covered with thick make-up.
When the earth had filled the holes and risen into a mound, the Muslim families sprinkled water on top. The graves were covered in flowers and wreaths carrying tributes to the dead.
As the day wore on more and more people piled out of buses and cars that lined the road from the cemetery to the edge of Beslan, a mile away. Later it began to rain. "Even the sky is crying," said a driver who brought mourners to the meadow.
At one grave, two sisters were being buried together.
Boris Isayev, 48, said: "I knew a woman who's being buried over there. She worked in my local grocery store. She saved her two children by flinging her body over them at the moment of the explosion. Who could imagine such a catastrophe?"
In one grave, Alina Khubechova, who had celebrated her 11th birthday the day before the hostage-takers struck, was being buried. Her parents held a picture of her, with white ribbons in her brown hair.
"Beslan is such a small town," said Zoya, who attended her funeral. "What did we do to deserve all this?" We will never recover:
A most excellent idea!
These poor, poor families. Many prayers being said.
There is a very old American saying: "The Lord will take care of your children, and I will take care of your wife." From the old folk song "Stagger Lee"
You are right. This message needs to go everywhere.
Well... the Lord killed all the firstborn of Egypt except for those (the Israelites) who had blood daubed on the lintel and the doorpost.
Chechnia has a right to exist alright. As a nuclear free fire zone. The mulsims will not learn to play nice with others until they have been almost totally destroyed. But its their choice. They seem to almost want it. Islam is no longer a religon but a death cult.
Islamofascists
8o)
...And your point??
BUMP!
Anyone who does not see Islam for the Satanic death cult that it is by now is a severely disordered individual.
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