Posted on 09/03/2004 2:45:31 AM PDT by kattracks
BESLAN, Russia - A group of about 30 women and children broke out of a school in southern Russia where militants were holding hundreds of people captive Friday, a news agency reported, after two loud explosions were heard and Russian commandos opened fire near the building.The Interfax news agency said that the school's roof had collapsed and militants were shelling and firing from the building. Interfax said the hostages who broke out of the school included women and children. It was impossible to immediately verify the reports.
Two helicopters hovered overhead. An ambulance rushed from the scene and CNN reported that at least two people were wounded. On Thursday, the militants inside the school had released some 26 of the hundreds of hostages held inside the building since Wednesday.
per kabc radio reporter in moscow, the kids were shot by the rebels as they were running away from the school .
I didn't think the military had done it... but that also fits in... scumbags are watching the "rescue workers" and the soldiers hit from another direction.
I agree. We need a free world organization similar to what NATO was during the Cold War - only this time it needs to be composed of those countries with the greatest interests in fighting Islamic terrorism. The US, Russia, Great Britain, India, and Australia come to mind (the Indonesian jihadi have already stated they're going to "invade" Northern Australia.) Unlike NATO, this group would be geographically spread out, rather than bunched up all in one place (Northern Europe.) That's appropriate, though, because the threat is global.
You are naive...The Chechnyans are the enemy. They support these monsters and protect them. If the so called moderate Muslims didn't agree with them, they would have turned them over to the police. Checnya is a small country, the people are well aware of who these animals are...the do the dirty work of the so called mainstream Muslims.
What are people doing in their underwear?
Here's a one-hour-old update on the situation. It looks like the Russian troops have the situation under control. But many hostages have died. Lord have mercy.
This article calls the Chechen bandit "militants" what they really are--TERRORISTS!!!! And the reporters are willing to sign their names and post e-mail addresses. I respect both these things.
________________________
Russian Troops Storm School; Dozens Reported Dead (Update3)
Sept. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Russian troops stormed a school in the country's south as hostages fled the gymnasium where armed terrorists held as many as 1,500 people captive for two days. Dozens of people died, Interfax and CNN reported from the scene.
More than 400 hostages were taken to hospitals, Interfax reported. A cameraman from U.K.-based ITV said at least 100 dead bodies were in the school after the storm, Cable News Network reported. Interfax said ``dozens'' died. An armed group of 28 people wearing explosive belts took over the school Wednesday, demanding Russia grant full independence to Chechnya.
The raid was the fourth Chechnya-related terrorist incident in 10 days. Two passenger planes crashed Aug. 24 after explosions, killing 89 people, and 10 died on Monday evening after a suicide bomb attack near a Moscow subway station. President Vladimir Putin first commented yesterday, calling all four acts ``attacks on Russia as a whole'' as he met Jordan's King Abdullah II in Moscow.
``The feeling of stability has been very seriously undermined by one terrorist attack after another,'' said Alexei Moisseev, an economist at Moscow brokerage Renaissance Capital. ``Instead of addressing the nation, Putin made comments while meeting leaders of other nations.''
Putin's popularity has been declining this year, according to opinion polls by the Moscow-based Levada Center, an independent agency. His approval rating stood at 68 percent last month, down from 81 percent at the start of the year and the lowest level for Putin since December 2000, Levada said, based on surveys of 1,600 people across Russia with a margin of error of 3.4 percent.
Terrorists Opened Fire
Russian soldiers opened fire at terrorists who tried to flee among the hostages, Valery Andreev, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service, said in remarks broadcast on state-run Rossiya television.
As many as 1,500 people, mostly women and children, were taken captive in the school on Sept. 1, Zalina Dzandarova, a former hostage who was released yesterday, said earlier today.
One or more terrorists started firing when Russian rescuers entered the school with the hostage-takers' permission to take out the bodies of between 10 and 20 people killed earlier, Andreev said. A group of 40 children broke out while the bodies were being removed and the terrorists opened fire indiscriminately, he said.
The hostage-takers responded by detonating a bomb, causing the school's roof to partly collapse, Andreev said.
Russian forces blew a hole in the wall of the building where the hostages were being held to create an extra escape route for the captives, Itar-Tass reported, citing eye witnesses.
The armed group had demanded the separation of Chechnya from Russia, North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov told Agence France Presse. Beslan is in North Ossetia, about 60 kilometers west of the Chechen capital, Grozny.
There were no ``clear demands,'' according to Dzugayev.
Chechnya
Russia has about 80,000 soldiers in Chechnya. The republic on Sunday elected Alu Alkhanov president in a vote organized by the pro-Putin government to replace Akhmad Kadyrov, who was assassinated in May. Rebels called the elections illegitimate.
Most of the hostages released yesterday ``are in a shock,'' North Ossetia spokesman Murat Biazrov said.
Russian troops invaded Chechnya in August 1999 for the second time in five years to suppress a separatist rebellion. Since then, Putin has refused any compromise, saying the campaign in Chechnya is part of the international war on terrorism. North Ossetia borders Chechnya.
The group seized its hostages during a ceremony to begin the Russian school year. Festivities are usually held in schools across Russia on Sept. 1, with children and their parents wearing their best clothes and carrying flowers for teachers.
Suicide Bombers
Two female suicide bombers detonated themselves on Sept. 1, killing as many as 20 hostages, Dzandarova said, adding that the hostages that she was held with didn't witness the incident. She said the gunmen ``told us they did this.''
Leonid Roshal, director of the Catastrophe Medical Center, talked to the terrorists on at least two occasions and said they had refused to accept food, water and medicine deliveries. Roshal negotiated with Chechen rebels when they took more than 800 hostages at a Moscow theater in October 2002, demanding an end to Russia's war in Chechnya.
At least 129 hostages died then in Russia's worst terrorist attack, when special forces stormed the Moscow theater, ending a three-day standoff and killing all 41 hostage-takers.
The republic's separatist movement fell under the influence of Muslim fundamentalists amid Russian brutality toward civilians in a war from 1994 to 1996, when Arab mercenaries joined the conflict. Russians and Chechens have been criticized by groups such as Amnesty International for mistreating civilians.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Halia Pavliva in Moscow at at hpavliva@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Chris Kirkham at ckirkham@bloomberg.net
Tim Coulter at tcoulter@bloomberg.net
Peter Torday at ptorday@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: September 3, 2004 09:56 EDT
Don't be so simplistic. As though the terrorists won't declare loyalty with those truly loyal.
These are a minority within Chechnya. Most of the children they help hostage were probably moslem as well.
Add Medina to it too...
Very sad day for mankind.
God bless the innocent Americans and Russians as we both struggle with this satanic evil.
Add Serbia, please!!!!
That's a question I keep asking too. Some weren't even in underwear. Were they stripped to strip them of their dignity, or for something even more sinister? With these monsters, I simply can't guess.
militants = terrorist child killers
(media gets it wrong again bump)
Look all Muslims believe in the Koran which calls for the death of the infidels...Sorry, anyone who truly believes in Islam is by their own word our enemy. It's about time the West realized this and dealt with the child murderers properly (I'll leave the details out, but I have a few ideas let me tell you).
bttt
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3624024.stm
I don't know how to post pictures, here is another that makes me want to break out in tears.
Yeah, Saddam was such a nice, reasonable guy just like Mikie MOOer claims. Iraq was the center of world terrorist and after his operatives twice attacked the US within the US it was time to take him out.
Bush is fighting EXACTLY the right war.
It is also a lie that Saddam had laws against Wahhabism. He may have closely controlled Saudi influence in Iraq but that is about it. Or has there been a secret releash of all the Wahhabi prisoners he held?
I guess one caption says it was really hot in the building.
It must have been horrible in there for girls to strip down to their undies and guys to do the same....yikes.
McCain is not one of my favorites either, but you are shooting the messenger. Read his quote--a choice "between war or a graver threat." It appears he is starting to "get it" too.
The topic of this thread is terrorism, not whether McCain is a worthy messenger. Scolding people for mentioning McCain doesn't add to the quality of the discussion.
#1: The Japanese national character is 180 degrees apart from the wahhabi/Islamic terrorist mindset. If you are defeated, you yield to the situation and don't continue fighting. The Japanese WW 2 POWs sang like canaries when they woke up in the field hospitals to find themselves prisoners of the Americans. To their mind, they were "dead men" anyway, so many cooperated. It was the same after the national defeat.
The Japanese were *rational.* Cmdr. Perry opened Japan up to the world in the 1850s; Emperor Meiji took the throne in the 1860s, and by 1910 Japan was a modernized society (for the day.)
How? Two reasons: universal education and the establishment of an infrastructure across the whole country, not just for a tiny minority. The Japanese studied European and American schooling (back in the late 19th/early 20th century when it still rigorous) and directly implemented the methods.
Japan is well-supplied with water for hydro power and the country electrified relatively quickly (we didn't do so well in the US until the Great Depression.)
To my knowledge, no society on earth has moved as quickly and seamlessly from a literal medieval level to a modern one as did Japan. I think their religions were important, too. Nothing in Shinto or Buddhism is in any way in conflict with modernity.
In essence, when we fought the Japanese in WW 2, we weren't fighting savages with medieval thinking. We were fighting modern men who were largely rational, even if they were brutally cruel.
It didn't hurt that we nuked them, either. Twice.
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