By Richard Ayton
BESLAN, Russia (Reuters) - Hostages ran screaming amid explosions and automatic fire from a Russian school on Friday where hundreds of children and adults had been seized by an armed group demanding Chechen independence.
Russian news agencies said a group of hostages had escaped, and a Reuters correspondent saw soldiers carrying children away from the school, some of them covered in blood, as ambulances sped to the scene and military helicopters circled overhead.
The Interfax news agency said the school's roof had collapsed, according to authorities, and that 30 hostages had been rescued.
It was not clear what had triggered the battle, a few hours after Russia insisted it would not resort to force to free the children, parents and teachers being held for a third day without food or water.
Officials said some 500 people were being held in the school in North Ossetia, near Chechnya (news - web sites), but released hostages said the number could be nearer 1,500, lying on top of each other in increasingly desperate conditions.
Alexander Dzasokhov, president of the province of North Ossetia, said the 40 or so masked gunmen were demanding an independent Chechnya, the first clear link between them and the decade-long separatist rebellion in the neighboring province.
But he tried to reassure hundreds of fraught parents who spent the night near the school in the town of Beslan, telling reporters: "I tell you frankly and honestly ... the option of force is not being considered."
Reports from some of the women and children released on Thursday painted a grim picture.
"You know, there aren't 350 people (the previous official number) in there, but 1,500 in all. People are lying one on top of another," Zalina Dzandarova, a 27-year-old woman, told the daily Kommersant.
One unidentified woman freed on Thursday told Izvestia that during the night children occasionally began to cry:
"Then the fighters would fire in the air to restore quiet. In the morning they told us they would not give us anything more to drink because the authorities were not ready to negotiate.
"When children went to the toilet, some tried to drink from the tap. The fighters stopped them straight away."
Dzasokhov said the captors had made their demands in talks on Thursday with Ruslan Aushev, a moderate former leader of nearby Ingushetia province, who has taken on a mediating role.
"The demands relayed to Aushev yesterday ... were that Chechnya must be an independent state," he said.
WAVE OF ATTACKS
The school siege is the latest in a wave of violent attacks in Russia in recent weeks, all linked to Chechen separatists.
Last week, suicide bombers were blamed for the near-simultaneous crash of two passenger planes in which 90 people died. And this week, in central Moscow a suicide bomber blew herself up, killing nine people.
Russian media have speculated that the gunmen could belong to separatist forces under field commander Magomed Yevloyev, an Ingush who is believed to have led a mass assault on Ingushetia in June.
With the clock ticking for President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) to end the crisis, security experts warned of a possible bloody end.
Putin, who came to power in 2000 vowing to "wipe out" Chechen militants, pledged to do all he could to save the hostages.
But he has refused any suggestion of a compromise on Chechnya remaining part of Russia. Previous ends to hostage crises have ended in huge loss of life.
Izvestia said 860 pupils attended School No.1 in Beslan. But the number of people on the campus would have been swollen by parents and relatives attending the first-day ceremony traditional in Russian schools.
Up to 16 people are believed to have been killed in the early stages of the assault.
Dzandarova said the masked gang struck at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, shooting into the air.
"Everybody, parents and children, ran in panic into the school building," she said, adding that the attackers killed people left in the school yard and those who resisted.
Two women assailants blew themselves up in a corridor, killing a number of male hostages. Hostages were later herded into the school gym, where the captors booby-trapped the basketball hoops, an unidentified mother told Izvestiya.
Dzandarova added: "They took some of the injured out of the gym and finished them off right there in the corridor."
The unnamed mother said the captors were well organized: "None of the terrorists removed their masks. Nobody can see their faces. They aren't tired. They are resting in turns."
(Additional reporting by Oliver Bullough)
ABC reporting an escalation or possible violent conclusion to the standoff.
MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian special forces have stormed the school where hundreds are being held hostage, the Interfax agency reported, citing the local crisis cell.
Rebels were trying to leave the Russian school where hundreds are being held hostage, pursued by soldiers, the agency said.
Moments earlier, the roof of the Russian school where hundreds are being held hostage caved in.
Special forces have been forced to act in view of developments around the school.
Earlier, a group of hostages escaped from the school, news agencies said, and adults were seen carrying children to nearby cars following three explosions in the area.
Six loud explosions could be heard outside the school within the space of about 15 minutes, and shortly afterwards it was reported that some hostages had escaped.
Devils. Islam must be eliminated from the face of the earth. IT is our enemy. Period!!
These vermin tortured and murdered some large number of helpless and innocent children. The time for negotiation, for compassion, even for reason is at an end. It is time - long past time - to end is-slime. Yes - End Islam. Utterly. Completely. Absolutely
I really hate people who terrorize children. I hope the Russians kill every single one of them slowly.
By MIKE ECKEL, Associated Press Writer
BESLAN, Russia - At least seven people were killed and 310 others wounded Friday, reports said, after commandos stormed a school in southern Russia where hundreds had been held hostage for three days by Chechen rebels strapped with explosives.
Troops killed five of the hostage-takers but 13 others escaped, the ITAR-Tass news agency said. Troops backed by tanks were pursuing the militants, some of whom were said to be holed up in a house in the area, ITAR-Tass said.
Russian authorities claimed to have control of the school, and the Interfax news agency reported that all the hostages had been evacuated from the school gymnasium. But gunfire continued to ring out some three hours after the commandos' raid.
The scene around the school was chaotic: people running through the streets, columns of smoke overhead, the cries of children and the wounded carried off on stretchers.
Seven people were killed, ITAR-Tass said, and some 310 hostages — most of them children — were wounded, officials from the regional Health Ministry told the news agency. At least four of the dead were children. A nurse spreading sheets on stretchers told The Associated Press that Russian officials expected "very many" wounded.
The commandos stormed the building on the third day of the hostage crisis in Beslan. The raid came after about 30 women and children broke out of the building, some bloodied and screaming.
Interfax said militants fired at children who ran from the building, and unconfirmed reports said some of the hostage-takers, possibly including women bearing suicide belts, may have taken hostages with them.
Women escaping the building were seen fainting and others, some covered in blood, were carried away on stretchers. Many children were only partly clothed because of the stifling heat in the gymnasium where they had been held since the militants took the building Wednesday.
Interfax said the school's roof had collapsed — possibly from the explosives some militants had strapped to their bodies. The militants had reportedly threatened to blow up the building if authorities tried to storm.
On Thursday, the militants had freed about 26 hostages, all women and children, and Russian officials had been in negotiations with the militants since they had seized the building Wednesday.
There were conflicting reports of the number of hostages, with official saying about 350 and people among a small group freed on Wednesday saying there were about 1,500.
President Vladimir Putin had said that everything possible would be done to end the "horrible" crisis and save the lives of the children.
Two major hostage-taking raids by Chechen rebels outside the war-torn region in the past decade prompted forceful Russian rescue operations that led to many deaths. The most recent, the seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002, ended after a knockout gas was pumped into the building, debilitating the captors but causing almost all of the 129 hostage deaths.
This TV-grab image shows hostages in the school garden during the rescue operation. Special forces stormed a Russian school and scores of children made a daring escape as explosions and gunfire erupted after militants holding hundreds hostage demanded independence for Chechnya.(AFP/NTV)
This TV-grab image shows Russian soldiers helping an injured woman during the rescure operation in Beslan. Russian special forces stormed a school ending a three-day hostage crisis and freeing hundreds of children, parents and teachers held without food or water by rebels demanding independence for Chechnya.(AFP/NTV)
A man carries his son after he was released from the school seized by armed separatists in the town of Beslan near Chechnya, September 3, 2004. REUTERS/Viktor Korotayev
A mother comforts her son as he awaits medical attention near the school in southern Russia where militants were holding hundreds of people captive in Beslan, North Ossetia, in this image from television Friday, Sept. 3, 2004. 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. (AP Photo/APTN)
Russian Interior Ministry officer carries a girl after she was released from the school seized by heavily armed masked men and women in the town of Beslan in the province of North Ossetia near Chechnya, September 3, 2004. Russian soldiers battled Chechen separatists on Friday to end a two-day-old school siege as naked children ran out screaming amid explosions and machinegun fire. REUTERS/Viktor Korotayev
A boy and a girl sit in a car after they were released from the school seized by heavily armed masked men and women in the town of Beslan in the province of North Ossetia near Chechnya, September 3, 2004. Russian soldiers battled Chechen separatists on Friday to end a two-day-old school siege as naked children ran out screaming amid explosions and machinegun fire. REUTERS/Viktor Korotayev
Prayers for the innocent.
May all of the Islamonazis go to Islamohell.
Then Putin needs to hunt down and exterminate any adult associated with this outrage.
If outside agitators like George $oreA$$ financed this act of terror or the bombing of the two airplanes, they need to brought to Russia for trial and punishment of their crimes against innocents.
That does it.
Until this morning, I was going to vote Peroutka.
No matter how principled I thought that vote would be, I cannot cast it that way now.
It is only a matter of time before these terrorists try something like that in an American school/movie theater/ grocery store.
The way I see it now is that the best thing I can do to protect my family on election day is to vote to re-elect the President.
When the Romans were unable to reach an accomodation with an enemy, and had found the enemy so intractable as to be incapable of keeping a peace agreement, they would, after conquering, kill every living thing in the enemy's territory: men, women, children, dogs, horses - everything.
The Romans did not do this out of savagery, but because they had determined over the course of hundreds of years that such measures were the only effective means of causing barbarians to fear Rome enough that they would stop committing depradations on the fringes of the Empire.
