Eyewitnesses: The roof caught fire when they began shooting shells at it
October 7th, 2004
The last few days - soon after Rostov's 124th laboratory began to identify the remains - there have been more teacher funerals. They had not been identified by relatives after the storming of the school. Only one teacher was buried in an open coffin.
"Instead of the body of Tarkan Gubuliyevich Sabanov, they buried a boot. The boot was the only thing that remained in one piece. It wasn't a 'storm'. There were only tanks," said Lyudmila Kokova, elementary principal at Beslan school number one.
There were tanks. The hostages which they liberated said: 'They fired on the school so that the floor shook like an earthquake'.
Policemen who chased people from around the school said that there were no reasonable ideas coming from the operational headquarters. No leadership. Later there was but one order - get people away from the school, enlarge the perimeter. On the evening of September 2nd, tanks and armored vehicles pulled up to the school. It was understood: There would be a 'storm'.
Opposite the school, along Komintern street, from the direction of the railroad, came two tanks. There were also BTRs, a BMP, 'Bumblebee' flamethrowers, and helicopters which descended to the level of the second floor and fired machineguns through the class and cafeteria windows. Children and adults tell how the helicopters fired at the roof of the gymnasium, and how it started on fire.
"After the explosions there was no fire in the gym. The height of the gymnasium walls was about six meters. The glass was blown out. The walls were damaged. There were a lot of bodies along the walls. But the roof remained whole," asserted Marina Karkuzashvili. All of the Karkuzashvilis were hostages: Marina, her grandmother, her sister Lora, three of Marina's children, as well as two of Lora's, were there. "The roof caught fire when they began shooting shells at it. They exploded," and suddenly there was lots of fire. The plastic panels on the ceiling quickly became ablaze, and burning flakes fell on the people. People lit up like torches.
Marina was interrupted by children and a mass of details and impressions are added in the Ossetian language. These children, perhaps, are too small to believe. But can they really understand the operation of the 'Bumblebee' flamethrower? But the next day, on the program 'News of the Week', the announcer calmly and in detail confirmed the underage hostages statements. It was emphasized that the flamethrowers were only used against the terrorists, that is, selectively, 'pin-point'. It became clear, however, that the authors of the television program did not understand the operating principle of the 'Bumblebee', either.
"Lora died right before my eyes. The rebels drove us to the second floor, into the cafeteria. A few women and children were forced to climb up on the window-sills and wave white school aprons and blouses. And shout: 'Don't shoot at us!'. My sister Lora stood at one window, with my daughter Diana. And they were yelling. But who could hear them? Lora kind of knocked my Diana to the floor. Another woman fainted. The rest, including Lora, they shot."
Marina confidently asserts that it was our side who shot them down. Physicians also confirm that the wounds were in the chest, and not in the back.
"Perhaps these were stray bullets?" I asked Marina.
"They were not bullets. A bullet, just a hole. But my Lora had craters in her body, a chunk of her hip was torn away."
There were about 1300 hostages in the school. The number killed today stands at more than 400. Every third hostage died.
It was a valuable military operation.
Because the army 'pissed on' the terrorists.
And in Chechnya. And in Beslan.
Elena MILASHINA, our special correspondent, Beslan
