Attackers take over russian school, hold 400 hostages.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Armed attackers seized a school in southern Russia near rebel Chechnya Wednesday, took up to 400 children and adults hostage and threatened to blow up the building if police tried to storm it, news agencies said.

The assault bore the hallmarks of a Chechen rebel operation. The gang of up to 17 heavily-armed men and women stormed into the secondary school in Beslan in North Ossetia province during a ceremony to mark the first day of the new school year.

The gang, some strapped with explosives, herded captives into the school's gymnasium and mined it, RIA news agency said. They threatened to blow up the building with their captives if interior ministry forces tried to take it by force.

Itar-Tass news agency said a local Muslim leader entered the school to meet the attackers but they turned him away. North Ossetia has a small Muslim community. Most Chechens are Muslim.

Witnesses near the school said they could hear the continuous rattle of gunfire into the early afternoon.

"Every gunshot I hear is like a shot into my heart," said one woman, Vera, tears pouring down her cheeks and who said her child was among the hostages.

Hundreds of police, rescue officials, and interior ministry troops with AK-47 rifles surrounded the school. Armored vehicles were parked nearby.

Tass said the attackers demanded the release of fighters seized in neighboring Ingushetia in June during a huge rebel raid on the region. They insisted they would negotiate only with the presidents of North Ossetia and Ingushetia.

SHOCK, DISBELIEF

"I was standing next to the (school) gates when I saw three people with guns running. At first, I thought it was a joke but then they started shooting in the air. Then I ran away," teen-ager Zaurbek Tsumartov told local television.

At least three civilians were killed and 11 injured in the initial phase of the attack, Tass quoted the local interior ministry as saying. Nearly 50 children had managed to escape.

It was the latest in a wave of violence that has hit Russia in recent weeks, blamed on Chechen separatists and raising questions over President Vladimir Putin's hard-line strategy to bring the rebels to heel. A tense presidential election was held in Chechnya Sunday, when the Kremlin's candidate won easily.

Putin, who returned hurriedly from a Black Sea vacation to Moscow to handle the crisis, rose to power in 2000 on the back of his tough approach on Chechnya and has always refused to negotiate with separatists.

Previous hostage-taking involving Chechen rebels have all ended with huge loss of life.

When Chechen rebels seized 700 hostages at a Moscow theater in 2002, 129 hostages and 41 guerrillas were killed when Russian troops stormed the building using poisonous gas.

In 1995, Chechen rebels took hundreds of hostages in a hospital in the southern Russian town of Budennovsk. More than 100 died during the assault and a botched Russian commando raid.

HOSTAGE NUMBER VARIES

Reports of the number of hostages held in the latest attack varied between "more than 120" and 400, including up to 200 children. The school has about 900 pupils and 60 teachers.

"There could be up to 400 children and teachers held hostage," Irina Terkina, a spokeswoman for Putin's envoy in southern Russia, said by telephone.

The mass hostage-taking was a new challenge to Putin's Chechnya policies. Tuesday, a female suicide bomber blew herself up in central Moscow in an attack that killed nine people and injured 51.

On August 24 two passenger planes were blown up apparently by suicide bombers in attacks that killed 90 people.

North Ossetia lies to the west of the seething Chechnya region where Russian forces have been fighting a war with separatist rebels for a decade.

There was no immediate charge that Chechen rebels were behind the attack, but the well-organized assault and the proximity to Chechnya suggested they may well be involved.

Yeah I saw that on the news... pretty fucked if you ask me.

In Sydney some guys robbed a bank and got away with it!!! How cool is that!

m: live strong

d: chop my head

m: paint my pants

d: this is the only day this can really work

m: what about me?

d: i'm very sorry

I think Putin should destroy these motherfuckers. And by "these motherfuckers", I mean them Chechen fuckers.

These guys have a different understanding of what "moral" means than the rest of the world. It would be different, somehow, if school full of innocent kids got hit by accident when the Chechen rebels did something like blew up a car bomb to hit a passing Russian Army convoy. The kids would still be hurt, but it wouldn't have been deliberate. That makes a difference.

They hide among helpless, unarmed civilians, then when conventional forces attack them there, they moan and wail about civilian casualties. The responsibility for those casualties rests WITH THE REBELS, not with the attacking conventional forces. They are trying to use the normal concern about minimizing non-combatant injuries and damage of sacred sites as a tactical device against the conventional forces, by hiding among civilians, by hiding in mosques, by using ambulances to transport weapons and ammunition.

These tactics are more than just inhumane. They errode the very sense of human compassion and restraint that exists, even in warfare, even in warfare against terrorists.

The captured Afghanis and Iraqis and "foreign fighters" are not being genuinely tortured. Mistreated, treated roughly, yes, but not tortured. If they were being tortured, the news reports would not be about being things like being held naked in a cell, but about electric shock, burns, repeated partial hangings, repeated partial drowning, crushing injuries to extremities, sexual mutilation and other horrid activities. Tortured prisoners (if they survive) come out of prison with extensive scarring, missing fingers, blinded and so on. They don't come out and talk shit about allegedly being "tortured."

The U.S. and allied forces are exercising extreme restraint against the various enclaves of Islamist resistance, and even the Russians have not brought the full power of their armed forces to bear. If they had, Chechnya would not have a single house or building still standing anywhere in the province. If Russia intending to wage real war against the Chechnyans, they would not be taking the ground on foot, with tanks and BMP's, but by air and by artillery. They would simply bomb and shell every city, town and village flat. They would shoot anybody they found moving, anyone trying to escape, anyone who tried to move out of the battle area. They would bomb dams, water reservoirs, power generating plants, hospitals, schools, industrial plants. they would be intent on "bombing them back to the Stone Age," which they could very easily do. They would cut off all food supply, all medical supply. Any Chechnyan found in posession of a weapon would be executed, and his family's home demolished.

Both the U.S. and Russia are attempting to deal with all this like civilized human beings, mostly because our respective civilian populations still expect it. But when the Chechnyans kill a school full of innocent Russian children, or when they bomb buses full of innocent civilians, or when they try to use chemical weapons or nuclear weapons, rather quickly the civilian population stops expecting their respective governments to be humane, and start demanding that the enemy be exterminated. Which is something that is definately possible, and if you don't believe it, just wait until the Islamic terrorists finally use a nuke or a chemical or biological weapon against us.

People here bitch about the prospect of a draft--man, that is the LEAST of our worries. Both the American people and the Russian people are capable of opening the gates of Hell. If the terrorists think they are going to intimidate the U.S. (or Russia, for that matter) they are making an unbelieveably big mistake.

As bad as the present difficulties are, they are like NOTHING compared to the horror that is possible. If the people of Afghanistan and Iraq and Chechnya were smart, they would take care of the terrorists themselves, to avoid the counterattack.

now this is my kind of news story

KaBar...you're one brilliant mo fo. Always a pleasure reading your posts.

good, there hasent been an assasination either anytime lately. that would be good. now there onto me. bush cocaine. kill em

got a stolen wife and a rhinestone life

Originally posted by LENS

KaBar...you're one brilliant mo fo. Always a pleasure reading your posts.

agreed

Damn, I couldn't imagine the hardships of having to deal with a situation like that. It is hard enough reading about it knowing I can't do a thing. I'm not a religous nut, but I'd have to say I will say some sort of prayer.

That is just not cool at all:nope: I don't know what I would do if i was in that situation.

trying to use a school full of children to make a statement or protest against policy is so fucking stupid. the sad part, to me, is it'll get worse before it gets better.

I'm not saying its black and white, but I doubt (myself included) that many or even any of us have 5% of the understanding we have of any of our American conflicts. Here is an interesting summary...

WHY THEY DO IT

That said, Kabar you started a thread about a flash bang grenader and say judgementally:

Originally posted by KaBar2

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK, BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE GUYS WHO BURNED DOWN THE BRANCH DAVIDIANS IN WACO.

But did Koresh not hide behind children? Could he not have freed the women and innocents, even commanded them to go? No doubt they were there out of free will, but the responcibility is the same. He is as responcible for there deaths as these rebels may turn out to be for the children...

KING BLING

Like I said in the flash-bang thread, I did not support Koresh's religious ideas or his personal behavior, although I had heard of the Branch Davidians before the Waco Massacre. I once lived in Walla Walla, WA, which is next to College Place, WA, which is a town founded by Seventh-Day Adventists, and the site of one of their universities. When co-workers who were SDA found out I was from Texas, they would ask "Have you ever heard of the Branch Davidians or David Koresh?" And I would say "no," and then they would shake their heads and say something like "He's not really an Adventist. He's sort of crazy."

From the Davidians' point of view, they reason they would not send out the women and children is mostly religious. They considered the forces of the ATFE, FBI and Texas Army National Guard to essentially be the forces of Satan. No decent Christian parent would be able to surrender innocent children to the custody of Satan. If the FBI had allowed maybe SDA women to go take the children somewhere safe, perhaps the Davidians would have agreed, but if it looked like the cops were simply going to snatch the kids out of the arms of the SDA women, then the Davidians would have preferred to keep their children safe by their side. Who in their wildest imagination would have ever believed the building would burn down? Except maybe the FBI.

"Waco: The Rules of Engagement" is a very disturbing movie. There is tape of tanks crushing the building with people inside. Tape of children burned to a crisp, their backs arched like a "C" from the cyanide in the tear gas. It was horrible. The night I saw this movie (at a university media center screening) there was practically a riot in the theatre. People were booing Clinton's image and especially Janet Reno's image. When the FBI supervisor who headed up both the Ruby Ridge operation and the Waco operation came on the screen people were shouting out "Murderer!" and shit like that.

Bill Clinton and Janet Reno came pretty close to setting off a civil war. It went underground after the OKC bombing tragedy (the militia movement actually grew bigger, but it was not obvious because it was more clandestine) and pretty much disbanded when George Bush was elected.

Wow...they screwed this one up. I'm begining to think the russian authorities are not the best in hostage recovery. THey are saying over 200 dead!! and 70% of the hostages were children. This is worse than when they gassed the theater by far.

RIP.

i don't know what they think they are going to accomplish, other than piss off the majority of the world.

i can't even begin to imagine what those innocent people are going through.

That's... so fucking sad.

Rest in peace.

well i theres gonna be such a big deal about this, why not make a big deal about the oppression the chechnyans have to live with under the russians? shit, russian lives are more valuable than chechnyan lives, or is it that the way the chechnyans get payback a little too extreme for the world?

Palestine forever

Originally posted by coolio

well i theres gonna be such a big deal about this, why not make a big deal about the oppression the chechnyans have to live with under the russians? shit, russian lives are more valuable than chechnyan lives, or is it that the way the chechnyans get payback a little too extreme for the world?

 

Palestine forever

Eat shit, baby eater. Go condone the killing of children somewhere else.

condone killing of children? shit thats what your doing by blaming the victims all the fucking time for reasons like "theyre different"

dude.. what are you talking about coolio?

Originally posted by coolio

condone killing of children? shit thats what your doing by blaming the victims all the fucking time for reasons like "theyre different"

Blah blah blah, go somewhere else you suck.

dont call me "dude", thats a white boy thing.

Originally posted by coolio

dont call me dude, thats a white boy thing.

well, ok, what did you mean by that statement then? exactly where do you get your information?

Originally posted by coolio

dont call me "dude", thats a white boy thing.

CONDEMNED

aright iloveboxcars, all bullshiting aside, the reason russia has problems with "terrorists" is becuase russia fucked chechnya and is currently fucking them, real hard. chechnya is a country right next to russia, and russia is trying to control them but they are resisting, try to imagin it like native hawaiians putting up a fight against the US before they became part of the US, well thats a summary, chechnyans are also a different ethnicity from russians, like french are a different ethnicity than swedish, and they are also different religions, like spaniards are different religion than morrocans.

i cant see why russia cant give them their own country. how many countries has russia already stolen and returned. just leave them be for fucks sake. give them the small piece of land they deserve.

dont steal countries, and people wont try and kill your kids. especially if theyeve tried everything else.

Originally posted by T.T Boy

i cant see why russia cant give them their own country. how many countries has russia already stolen and returned. just leave them be for fucks sake. give them the small piece of land they deserve.

 

dont steal countries, and people wont try and kill your kids. especially if theyeve tried everything else.

that sounds like justification, or at least a half-assed attempt at it.

Originally posted by coolio

condone killing of children? shit thats what your doing by blaming the victims all the fucking time for reasons like "theyre different"

i meant what did you mean by this statement. i know what's going on in this thread.. other than the bullshit you try to pull off posting.