Posted on 09/07/2004 4:00:47 PM PDT by blam
Russian TV broadcasts siege video
Watch the video
Dramatic video footage of inside the school in Beslan during the siege has been aired on Russian television. It shows adults and children packed into the school gymnasium as heavily-armed, masked men walk around the room.
Explosives, apparently wired and ready for use, lie on the floor while others are looped around basketball hoops at either end of the gym.
Russia's NTV network, the first to broadcast the video clip, said it had been recorded by the hostage-takers.
The network did not explain how it obtained the pictures.
The footage shows hundreds of hostages crowded into the gym - many with hands above their heads.
We've been to the morgue 10 or 15 times and opened up all the body bags, but Timor is not there
Slava, looking for her nephew They are still fully-clothed - although fanning themselves in the heat - suggesting the video was shot soon after the school was seized.
The camera zooms in on one hostage-taker, standing next to a young boy, with his boot on what NTV said was a book rigged with a detonator.
A woman hostage-taker, fully-clad in black dress and headscarf, is seen in the doorway holding a pistol.
There is also footage of blood on the floor, and a fire in another building on the school premises.
The BBC's Steven Eke in Moscow says that for many families in Beslan this will be the last footage of their loved ones alive.
DNA tests
For a third day, the grief-stricken town was burying more of the 330 people, mostly children, who died in the battle that ended the siege on Friday.
Relatives of around 200 people still missing were queuing up to give blood for DNA tests on the bodies that remain unidentified.
Agony goes on for relatives
Ethnic war fears
Officials say 107 bodies were damaged beyond recognition by the fire and the explosions.
The BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Beslan says anguished relatives have had to go through body bags themselves, as there are no accurate lists of victims.
"We've been to the morgue 10 or 15 times already. We've opened up all the body bags but Timor is not there," said Slava, who is looking for her 10-year-old nephew.
"We've asked officials where his remains are and no-one can tell us. Where did so many children disappear to?"
Rallies
Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Moscow as part of a government-endorsed rally against terrorism - one of several around the country.
Muscovites brandished banners, religious insignia and Russian flags in a massive show of unity during a second day of official mourning for the victims of the siege.
Map of the North Caucasus
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The BBC's Rob Cameron in Moscow says people are still consumed with anger at the events in Beslan.
"How can you kill children and shoot them? I came because Russia was slapped in the face and we will not take it," a pensioner named as Valery told AFP news agency.
But correspondents say there is also rising anger over the Russian authorities' handling of the siege.
Newspapers have also been posing awkward questions, such as whether the security services really had no plans to storm the school.
Some have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of using the rallies to deflect public anger over unanswered questions.
But the Russian president responded to his critics strongly on Tuesday, in particular to calls for talks with those seeking independence in Chechnya.
He told two British newspapers that entering talks was akin to the West negotiating with Osama Bin Laden, and said: "No one has a moral right to tell us to talk to child killers."
But Chechen rebel spokesman Akhmed Zakayev has said the rebels had no part in the "barbaric act of terrorism".
He blamed the attack on "local radical groups" and warned that President Putin's "punitive policy" in the region would make a "repeat of the Beslan tragedy inevitable".
BTTT
What monsters.
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Anyone know where we can see it for free?
Did they show the rapes?
Sounds like he's asking to be nuked.
Don't know, I didn't watch it...my computer is so old and I'm on dial-up...it won't take video.
I expect you're correct.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/video/40046000/rm/_40046492_video22_brown07_vi.ram
GRAPHIC video showing the horror experienced by the hostages during the Beslan school siege was broadcast on Russian television last night.
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