Posted on 09/08/2004 3:34:03 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Russia: Ethnic Tensions Heat Up in Ossetia
By Nabi Abdullaev
Staff Writer Police and troops were out in full force Tuesday in North Ossetia and Ingushetia as the Beslan hostage tragedy inflamed old hatred between regional ethnic groups and raised the threat of war.
"All this was done by the Ingush and Chechens," Zalina Budayeva, 48, said Tuesday at a memorial in the burnt-out Beslan school gymnasium where more than 300 of some 1,000 hostages died.
"In general, Ossetians are good people, Christians, and they are friends of the Russians," Budayeva said. "The Ingush are taught to murder Ossetians since childhood."
President Vladimir Putin warned after the school was seized by a group of Chechen, Ingush, Ossetian and Arab attackers last Wednesday that the crisis could "explode" simmering tensions between the Ingush and Ossetians, who waged a 1992 war over a disputed district of North Ossetia.
Ingush families began fleeing the region as early as Wednesday, Ekho Moskvy radio reported, citing its listeners there.
They had good reason to flee. Ossetians' initial shock about the school tragedy quickly turned to rage -- at law enforcement agencies for failing to protect the people, at the government for lying about the number of hostages, and at their old rivals, the Ingush.
"We have fought the Ingush with weapons in our hands. Today, our men are ready to go after them once again," Beslan resident Irina Parfiyeva said.
Huge anti-Ingush rallies were held in the main city of the disputed district, Prigorodny, on Saturday, a day after the hostage-taking ended in a bloodbath.
On Sunday, an angry mob of 1,000 people tried to destroy Ingush homes in the Prigorodny district, Gazeta.ru reported. Police broke up the crowd before it reached the homes.
North Ossetian State University officials put all Ingush and Chechen students on buses and sent them out of the region Monday, said Alan Khadikov, an Ossetian student at the university in the regional capital, Vladikavkaz.
The students came to classes as usual and were told by their professors that they had to leave for the time being for their own safety, Khadikov said.
Patrols have been stepped up at the internal border between North Ossetia and Ingushetia since last week.
Rallies continued in North Ossetia on Tuesday. About 1,500 people gathered at the regional government headquarters in Vladikavkaz to decry the authorities' handling of the hostage crisis and demand the resignation of North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov. A group of Ossetian opposition politicians and relatives of those killed in Beslan had earlier demanded that Dzasokhov step down by Tuesday.
The school death toll rose Tuesday by one to 336, including 156 children, a spokesman for Dzasokhov, Lev Dzugayev, told Interfax. A total of 346 people remained hospitalized in North Ossetia, Rostov-on-Don and Moscow, he said.
Meanwhile, new details about the attackers surfaced Tuesday that threatened to further tarnish the reputation of law enforcement agencies.
Two of the 32 attackers were detained and inexplicably released by federal authorities in Chechnya in 2002 and 2003, Vremya Novostei reported. One Chechen attacker was detained on suspicion of participating in a rebel raid on a village administration building, and the other, also a Chechen, was suspected of helping plan attacks by female suicide bombers.
"They were arrested and should have been kept behind bars," an unidentified law enforcement official told the newspaper.
A suspected leader in the Beslan attack, Ossetian Wahhabi follower Vladimir Khodov, openly spent the summer at his mother's house in Elkhotovo, Moskovsky Komsomolets reported, citing residents of the North Ossetian village. Khodov was on a national wanted list in connection with two terrorist attacks in North Ossetia earlier this year.
The main leader of the attackers, though, is believed to be a man known only as "the colonel," investigators said Tuesday.
Itar-Tass, citing a source in the Beslan investigation, said he served as a lieutenant to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, who has claimed responsibility for most of the terrorist attacks carried out across the country over the past two years.
The source also said that the school raid was bankrolled by Abu Omar as-Seif, whom Russian authorities claim is al-Qaida's envoy to Chechnya and the manager of funds to rebels from abroad.
"The colonel" had trouble keeping some attackers in line because they balked at the idea of taking children hostage, Nur-Pashi Kulayev, the only attacker who got out of the school alive, has told investigators.
Kulayev said several female suicide bombers in the group objected to using the children, and "the colonel" detonated their suicide-bomb belts by remote control in an attempt to reestablish control, Interfax reported Tuesday.
Three or four female suicide bombers took part in the raid, according to hostages and the police. Two of the women disappeared on the first day of the attack, and the hostages had whispered among themselves during the ordeal that the women had blown themselves up in the school library.
Kulayev also said "the colonel" shot dead a gunman who complained about holding children.
Kulayev's lawyer, Umar Sikoyev, told Sky News that the attackers' leader did not tell them about their mission before it started.
The raid, however, was clearly planned well in advance, and weapons were even hidden beforehand in the school's walls and under floorboards in the library. Authorities believe a group of people claiming to be from Dagestan or Ingushetia may have hidden the weapons during a summer renovation of the school.
Four of dead attackers participated in a raid in Ingushetia on June 21-22 that killed almost 90 people, Interfax said.
In Chechnya, federal security forces began rounding up relatives of Chechen rebels suspected of being involved in the raid as soon as it started. Akhmad Zakayev, envoy of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, said 20 of Maskhadov's relatives were detained and later released, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Kulayev, stammering and looking shaken, said in televised remarks Monday night that Maskhadov and Basayev had ordered the school raid.
Authorities detained up to 50 people, including relatives of Basayev, after the school was taken and sent them to the federal military's headquarters at Khankala, near Grozny, The Associated Press reported. The detainees were held for two days -- the men and boys blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs, and forced to kneel on cold stone, AP said, citing Maskhadov's brother-in-law Shirvani Semiyev, who was among the detainees.
A spokesman for the security services in Chechnya, Ilya Shabalkin, told AP that federal forces had rounded up the relatives for their own safety.
Staff Writer Simon Ostrovsky contributed to this report from Beslan, North Ossetia, and Timur Aliev contributed to this report from Beslan and Vladikavkaz.
Ping!
The fecal matter just struck the oscillating, air-moving device.
Change the place names and this article could easily be about what would be going on here if that school attack happened here: "Militia group suspected in mosque torching....Muslims targeted by cross burnings....Synagogue ransacked....Maphia retaliation feared after church bombing...."
This is not what we want our country to be. Therefore we need to stop the terrorists now.
The objective of the terrorists is to provoke retaliation against the neighboring Ingush, to widen the Chechen war into a Christian/Muslim civil war all over Russia. They think they can win if they get enough Muslims into the fight
This is exactly what the terrorists wanted. They want to provoke an ethnic civil war that ties the Russians police and military up in the region and wears them down.
}:-)4
The detainees.
"The detainees were held for two days -- the men and boys blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs, and forced to kneel on cold stone,..."
Oh, waaah! Liberals are already worrying about how the "detainees" are being treated.
Let me tell you libs, how they are being treated. They are being held, and interrogated, by the Spetsnaz. What are they, you ask? The most brutal, uncompassionate (uh oh) branch of the Russian special forces, that the Motherland has to offer. They were schooled in KGB-era tactics for dealing with enemies.
The nightmare that those Jihadi's are undergoing right now is of their own making, and they truly brought it on themselves; these are the consequences for their actions (consequences for actions - another big uh oh!). The Spetsnaz are not interested in U.N. guidlines on how to treat those cowards. They will be handled in standard form.
So, now that you know, go and cry in your latte.
I think someone had better start doing background checks on contractors in the US. It would not be to hard for a similar situation to happen here.
I hope you don't consider me a lib.
But just in case, I'll make sure that there is no ambiguity in any future comments I make in regards to the the complete extinction of islam (which I fully support).
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