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Saturday, September 4, 2004 GLOBAL JIHADChechen terrorists follow al-Qaida manualRussia school hostage-takers' cues from online playbook Posted: September 4, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern By Laura Mansfield © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com As details emerge of the three-day siege of a Russian school by Islamic terrorists – which reportedly resulted in more than 200 dead and 700 injured – it is becoming apparent that the operation closely followed the terror roadmap laid out in issue 10 of Al Battar, al-Qaida's online training manual. The tragic events unfolded in the town of Beslan, in the North Ossetia region, near Chechnya, as Islamic Chechen terrorists with suicide-bomb belts...

BESLAN, Russia - Russian President Vladimir Putin called Saturday for a new approach to law enforcement in the wake of the school hostage crisis that killed more than 340 people, and pledged the reform would be in accordance with the nation's constitution. Putin said international terrorists had declared "a full-scale war" against Russia, and that due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nation was weakened and unable to respond as effectively as it must. The Russian premier flew to Beslan before dawn on Saturday, as smoke was still rising from the shattered school. Russian authorities, who have tried...

...unless I see Muslims marching in the streets to denounce this horror, I'm giving up on the lot of them. No Jew, no Christian would ever tolerate or excuse this atrocity. Where are the Muslims? Not just leaders, but ordinary men and women? Why aren't they protesting all over the Islamic world? Why not in America? I'm sick of pretending to myself that most Muslims are good people, while seeing so little evidence of it. If they really are, they'll step up. Right now.

Images of dead, wounded and traumatized Russian children being carried from the scene of a rebel school siege horrified Middle Eastern Muslims, prompting forthright self-criticism Saturday and fresh concern about an international backlash against Islam and its followers. Arab leaders, Muslim clerics and ordinary parents across the Middle East denounced the school siege that left more than 340 people dead, many of them children, as unjustifiable. Some warned such actions damage Islam's image more than all its enemies could hope. Even some supporters of Islamic militancy condemned it, though at least one insisted Muslims were not behind it. "Holy warriors"...