Posted on 09/04/2004 2:18:21 PM PDT by wagglebee
BESLAN, Russia (AP) - A shaken President Vladimir Putin made a rare and candid admission of Russian weakness Saturday in the face of an "all-out war" by terrorists after more than 340 people - nearly half of them children - were killed in a hostage-taking at a southern school.
Putin went on national television to tell Russians that they must mobilize against terrorism and promised wide-ranging reforms to toughen security forces and purge corruption.
"We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten," he said.
Shocked relatives wandered among row after row of bodies lined up in black plastic or clear body bags on the pavement at a morgue in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, where the dead from the school standoff in Baslan were taken. In some open bags lay the contorted, thin bodies of children, some monstrously charred.
In Baslan, other relatives scoured lists of names to see if their loved ones had survived the chaos of the day before, when the standoff turned into violence, with militants setting off explosives in the school and commandos moving in to seize the building.
Workers cleaned up the gymnasium where the more than 1,000 hostages were held during the 62-hour ordeal. The gym of School No. 1 was reduced to a shell - the roof destroyed, the windows shattered - during Friday's fighting.
Regional Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said 323 people, including 156 children, were killed. More than 542 people including 336 children were hospitalized, medical officials said.
Dzgoyev also said 35 attackers - heavily-armed and explosive-laden men and women who were reportedly demanding independence for Chechnya - were killed in 10 hours of battles that shook the area around the school with gunfire and explosions after 1 p.m. Friday. Earlier, a senior prosecutor had said there were only 26 militants and all were killed. The discrepancy could not immediately be explained.
Putin made a quick visit to the town before dawn Friday, meeting local officials and touring a hospital to speak with wounded. He stopped to stroke the head of one injured child.
But some in the region were unimpressed, as grief turned to anger, both at the militants and at the government response.
"Putin arrived and left in the middle of the night while everyone is sleeping, probably because he was afraid to talk with the people, to look them in the eyes," said Zalina Gutiyeva, 37, a pediatrician in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, a Russian Orthodox region set amid the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus.
It was still unclear how exactly the standoff fell apart into violence on Friday. Officials say security forces had not intended to storm the building but were forced to when hostage-takers set off explosives - some however questioned that version.
The militants seized the school on the first day of classes on Wednesday, herding hundreds of children, parents who had been dropping their kids off, and other adults into the gymnasium, which the militants promptly wired with explosives - including bombs hanging from the basketball hoops. The packed gym became sweltering, and the hostage-takers refused to allow in food or water.
One survivor, Sima Albegova, told the Kommersant newspaper she asked the militants, why the captives were taken. "Because you vote for your Putin," one of the militants told her, she said.
Another freed hostages said a militant told her, "The federal forces killed our children and you didn't help us. If Putin doesn't withdraw forces from Chechnya and doesn't free our arrested brothers, we'll blow everything up," according to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.
Russian officials said the bloodshed began when explosions were apparently set off by the militants - possibly by accident - as emergency workers entered the school courtyard to collect the bodies of hostages killed in the initial raid Wednesday.
Diana Gadzhinova, a 14-year-old hostage, was quoted as telling Izvestia that the militants had ordered the hostages to lie face down in the gymnasium as workers approached to collect the bodies.
"They told us that there were going to be talks," she said. Others also told stories of how the explosions sent the militants guarding them running in what appeared to be confusion and surprise to see what had happened.
Hostages fled during the explosions, and the militants opened fire on them. Security forces opened fire in return, and commandos moved in, officials said.
The explosions tore through the roof of the gymnasium, sending wreckage down on hostages, killing many. Many survivors emerged naked covered in ashes and soot, their feet bloody from jumping barefoot out of broken windows to escape.
During his visit to Beslan, Putin stressed that security officials had not planned to storm the school - trying to fend off any potential criticism that the government side had provoked the bloodshed. He ordered the region's borders closed while officials searched for everyone connected with the attack.
"What happened was a terrorist act that was inhuman and unprecedented in its cruelty," Putin said in his televised speech later. "It is a challenge not to the president, the parliament and the government but a challenge to all of Russia, to all of our people. It is an attack on our nation."
Putin took a defiant tone, acknowledging Russia's weaknesses, but blaming it on the fall of the Soviet Union, foreign foes seeking to tear apart Russia and on corrupt officials. He said Russians could no longer live "carefree" and must all confront terrorism.
He called for Russians to mobilize against what he said was the "common danger" of terrorism. Measures would be taken, Putin promised, to overhaul the law enforcement organs, which he acknowledged had been infected by corruption, and tighten borders.
"We are obliged to create a much more effective security system and to demand action from our law enforcement organs that would be adequate to the level and scale of the new threats," he said.
The school attack was the latest violence thought connected to Chechen separatists who have been battling Russian rule for more than a decade. IT came after a suicide bomb attack outside a Moscow subway station Tuesday that killed eight people, and last week's near-simultaneous crashes of two Russian jetliners after what officials believe were explosions on board.
An unidentified intelligence official was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying the school assault was financed by Abu Omar As-Seyf, an Arab who allegedly represents al-Qaida in Chechnya, and masterminded by Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev.
With some families gathering for wakes for the dead, some were vowing vengeance in North Ossetia, a Russian Orthodox Christian region in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus.
"Fathers will bury their children, and after 40 days (the Orthodox mourning period) ... they will take up weapons and seek revenge," said Alan Kargiyev, a 20-year-old university student in Vladikavkaz.
We could make Fallujah disappear in less time than it takes to think about it. GW and the US are walking a fine line in Iraq, trying to help them establish some kind of working democracy. Getting maniac mullahs to go along with the program is dicey, but we're giving it a shot. Unfortunately, their followers have the collective i.q. of a bunch of thirteen year olds on crack. They're manipulated from cradle to grave by a murderous religion and have no life, no decent jobs, no hope. They're told their miserable condition is America's fault and their only reason for breathing is to get even.
Try living with a couple of so-called normal teenagers. They drive you crazy. We're dealing with a nation of teenagers in Iraq. The number of books published in the Middle East is what, two a year? They have no other source for news and reality than the mullah in the mosque or Al Jazeera, which, I'm delighted to see on Fox tonight, is being shut down by Baghdad for longer than just one month.
For Bush and the U.S., the alternative to patience and pinpoint bombing is dropping the hammer, big time and it may come to that. We may run out of time and patience, not because America is inherently impatient...although we are...but if terrorists hit us again, a school or worse, then Bush won't have the luxury of patience.
Foxnews tonight: continuing violence in Baghdad while Iraq struggles to elect some form of govt..A police station hit, American helicopter fired on, landing, killing two enemy fighters. Every other day some form of guerrilla violence fueled by foreign terrorists. What we should do is close Iraq's borders and take care of Syria and Iran, which is on Bush's list of things to do asap upon reelection...or earlier if events dictate. Easy for me to say. Still, it has to be done. If Iran goes nuclear...Israel won't allow that and has informed us pointedly. So we'll have to take care of Iran.
"Fathers will bury their children, and after 40 days (the Orthodox mourning period) ... they will take up weapons and seek revenge," said Alan Kargiyev, a 20-year-old university student in Vladikavkaz."
Russia has made mistakes to be sure. But then so have we. Remember us criticizing Russia for human rights violation in Chechnya? Remember us siding with the Muslims against the Christian Serbs?
Remember also that we supported the Muslims against the Soviets in Afghanistan. I don't think that was a mistake, only because the Soviets were known as occupiers not liberators.
So as Russia admits to underestimating the threat against them, let's give them the benefit of the doubt and work with them for a change.
There are those on this forum that are going to find it amazing that an Orthodox Christian area was attacked by Muslim terrorists, and nobody seems to notice this is a religious war of hatred.
Unless we wake up, we will die.
I don't CARE what their policies have been, or will be (ONLY in THIS regard, with the slaughtered innocent children)...this was cold blooded murder.
I agree, let's work WITH them...Ronald Reagan did. And look where that got them!
NO CHILD deserves this. NOT A ONE. Even the so-called Palestinian's. THEIR children don't deserve to be taught this hatred and murder, to be USED for evil.
Danny, I'm not yelling at you, and I agree with your post. I'm NOT happy (to say the least) with someone sitting in the comfort of their home saying that those kids deserved this.
Thanks for printing the speech. My heart goes out to these folks. I assume their operations were funded by Saudi money, and I hope that issue will be addressed directly.
I have not seen or read if Bush has commented publicly yet. I want to see an outspoken gesture of sympathy. And I want there to be an offer of help if help is requested. They were there for us when we went into Afghanistan.
Hey, cut that out. I'm an Orthodox Christian, some of those mosques used to be our churches, and we want them back! (Sure Hagia Sophia is a museum now--we want it back too--but some of the others that were turned into mosques still are.)
340 souls -- bozhe mou! (My God)
If President Bush could find a day to stop in Russia to join funeral or commemoration of victims, his election in 2004 would be secured.
Russia's 9/11 - Putin has woken up the Russian bear, they see the face of global terrorism with tentacles in the Chechen rebellion.
http://freedomstruth.blogspot.com
I agree with you. I don't know if he can get to Russia, but he needs to do something outspoken, both for human reasons, as well as for political and diplomatic ones. In a way, this is their 9/11 (although clearly its not their first one).
Since our Afghan war, I find myself much in sympathy with these people. They were the first to step forward to help, and our western euro allies all turned out to be "ex" allies (except the Brits, of course).
Sure they can be stopped. Ask Jan Sobieski, or the admiral at Lepanto.
And stop them we will. Just hope that it's not at the English Channel.
From which side? :(
Vlad the Impaler also ran off the Muslims.
I think they have always have been that way. However, they have always looked at it as an internal problem without connection to the worldwide Islamic terror. This incident may change their view on that issue.
I hope you are right.
There needs to be a world view that it is okay to eradicate those who believe that the death of innocents is a political means to a religious end.
"That's certainly suggested by his references to the glory days of the Soviet Union in his speech. You will recall how the FBI used 9/11 as an excuse, not to chase terrorists (at which they were never much use, anyway), but to get new "antiterrorist" surveillance powers, which so far have only been used against run-of-the-mill criminals."
You're kidding, right?
No, I know you're serious and totally, completely WRONG.
c
anti usa bull.
You think we were right in those instances? Most of the time we are. Most of the time we do stand on the right side of freedom and human rights.
But if we decide to always think of Russia as our enemy, they always will be our enemy.
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