Russia (Beslan School #1)
Brahharb
(9/4/04)
Reply Russia (Beslan School #1) Sad whats been happening in Russia with the planes being blown up and the school hostage situation and all the fighting for years. What if the school situation happened here? What type response would we give since Columbine "changed" what the officers are to do. And after 9/11 anything is possible. Would we send in troops? I suppose we would.
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Death toll rises beyond 300, Russian President Putin visits town where Russian forces freed hostages from school
Created: 9/4/2004 MDT - Updated: 9/4/2004
BESLAN, Russia (AP) - President Vladimir Putin promised on Saturday a tough response to what he called an "all-out war" by terrorists against Russia, as the body count from the school hostage-taking rose to more than 340 dead and some relatives still searched for their loved ones amid the confusion.
A grim-faced Putin addressed the nation on television after a pre-dawn visit to the scene of the hostage-taking in Beslan. In a surprise admission of weakness, he said Russia's past response to terrorism had been insufficient and said he would carry out wide reforms to strengthen the security forces.
"We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten," the former KGB spy said.
In Beslan, authorities were counting the dead, and relatives of hostages frantically searched through lists of the names of survivors, a day after security forces stormed the school where militants had been holding more than 1,000 hostages, mostly women and children, for nearly three days.
Regional Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said 323 people, including 156 children, were killed in Friday's violence. Russian Deputy Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said that all 26 hostage-takers were also killed.
Medical officials said more than 542 people including 336 children were hospitalized after the eruption of violence that ended the 62-hour hostage drama on Friday.
Commandos stormed the school after the militants set off explosions and began shooting at hostages who fled. The result was 10 hours of chaos. Crying children, some naked and covered with blood, fled the scene or were carried out amid explosions and gunfire. Security forces chased militants who split into groups and took refuge in a home and a basement. During the initial explosions, part of the school roof collapsed, causing many deaths.
Putin flew to Beslan, in the southern republic of North Ossetia, before dawn Saturday, as smoke was still rising from the shattered school. He ordered the borders of North Ossetia sealed while security forces search for the militants' accomplices.
He visited several hospitalized victims, stopping to stroke the head of one injured child and the arm of the school principal.
"Even alongside the most cruel attacks of the past, this terrorist act occupies a special place because it was aimed at children," he said during a meeting with regional officials, which was broadcast on Russian television.
He 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. Some North Ossetians complained, however, that his visit was too little, too late.
"Why didn't he come earlier? .... Why did he come in the middle of the night?" said Irina Volgokova, 33, whose close friend and the friend's daughter were missing.
"He is the head of our country. He should answer for this before the people."
Later, Putin made a speech on national television saying Russia must mobilize to face the threat of terrorism, telling Russians they could not continue living in a "carefree" way.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nation was weakened and unable to respond effectively to terrorism, Putin said.
He blamed police corruption and porous borders for the failure to stop attacks. "In any case, we couldn't adequately react ... We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten," he said.
He said measures would be taken to strengthen Russia's unity, create a more effective crisis management system, establish a new system to control the situation in the Caucasus, and overhaul the law enforcement organs.
The school attack followed a suicide bomb attack outside a Moscow subway station Tuesday that killed eight people, and last week's near-simultaneous crash of two Russian jetliners last week after what officials believe were explosions on board.
The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted an unnamed, high-ranking intelligence official in southern Russia as saying that the school seizure and other major terrorist attacks in Russia had been financed by Abu Omar As-Seyf, an Arab who allegedly represents al-Qaida in Chechnya.
The official said the school raid was masterminded by Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev and led by field commander Magomed Yevloyev, who was believed to be the leader of the strict Wahhabi sect of Muslims in Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya.
Nine or ten of the slain hostage-takers were Arabs, Russian officials said. An Arab presence could boost claims of involvement by international militant groups.
Dozens of people crowded around lists of survivors posted at the Beslan hospital Saturday, searching desperately for news of loved ones who were not yet accounted for. A man showed hospital nurses a photograph, a young boy dressed in a suit, like he was going to a birthday party or holiday celebration.
"We run here, we run there, like we're out of our minds, trying to find out anything we can about them," said Tsiada Biazrova, 47, whose neighbors' children had yet to be found.
For some, grief had turned to anger.
"Fathers will bury their children, and after 40 days (the Orthodox Christian mourning period) ... they will take up weapons and seek revenge," said Alan Kargiyev, a 20-year-old university student in the regional capital Vladikavkaz.
Russian authorities said the bloody end to the standoff came after explosions apparently set off by the militants, possibly by accident, as emergency workers were entering the school to collect the bodies of slain hostages.
As hostages took their chance to flee, the militants opened fire on them, and security forces, along with town residents who had brought their own weapons, opened covering fire to help the hostages escape. Commandos stormed into the building and secured it, then chased fleeing militants in the town, with shooting lasting for 10 hours.
Fridinsky, the prosecutor, said the hostage-takers had numbered 26 and all had been killed. The bodies of at least six militants lay outside the school on Saturday, surrounded by black metal and plastic weapons parts and bullets. A forensic investigator studied the bodies.
An explosives expert told NTV television that the militants, themselves strapped with explosives, hung bombs from basketball hoops in the gym and set other explosive devices in the building.
The region's governor, Alexander Dzasokhov, said Friday that the militants had demanded that Russian troops leave Chechnya, the first solid indication that the attack was connected to the rebellion.
The Federal Security Service chief in North Ossetia, Valery Andreyev, said Saturday that investigators were looking into whether militants had smuggled the explosives and weapons into the school and hidden them during a renovation this summer.
Alla Gadieyeva, a 24-year-old hostage who was seized with her son and mother, all three were among the survivors, said the captors laughed when she asked them for water for her mother.
"When children began to faint, they laughed," Gadieyeva said. "They were totally indifferent."
Two major hostage-taking raids by Chechen rebels outside the war-torn region in the past decade provoked Russian rescue operations that led to many deaths. 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.
In 1995, rebels led by guerrilla commander Basayev seized a hospital in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk, taking some 2,000 people hostage. The six-day standoff ended with a fierce Russian assault, and some 100 people died.
mama4paws
(9/5/04)
Re: Russia It is so very sad!!
We need Love and Peace not Death to our kids!
My two cents,
~~Mama~~
We are not born to hate....it is Learned!!
starviego
(9/5/04)
What a horrible story. I had hoped that the era of the school shooter was passing. Sadly, it seems to be getting worse.
OK, this is not in the same catagory as kids attacking at random at their own school. Though there seems to be a political motive, just like I think there was at CHS. Watch for any political/legal changes, just like they tightened up gun laws and security in school her in the USA after 4-20.
As far as this being the work of Chechyen seperatists, you can forget it. What would they possibly have to gain from this deliberate, going-out-of their-way to be cruel attack on innocents? No sir, the purpose of this op was to turn Russian public opinion to furious vengeance.
And if perps did manage to escape, then they seem have been as slow in setting up a perimeter as they were at Columbine. I had heard that one was caught and was dressed in all black.
Why is it that, across the globe, we seem to have entered an era(ever since about the mid '90s, by my watch) of mindless, purposeless acts of terrorism and destruction, where each tries to outdo the last in depravity and tragedy? Columbine is on the same line as Dunblane, Port Arthur, Murrah Building bombing, 9/11, and now this.
PS Does anybody know the name of the school?
SuperSaiyan Fan
(9/6/04)
Reply Re: Russia Yeah, what happened in Russia was very sad
I have to agree with Star that this incident and something like Columbine are two very diffrent situations.
The only other thing that I would say about the reaction to this is that who would have thought that a former head of the KGB(Puitn) would have been more upfront in less than five days after this incident than a lot of people concerning Columbine more than five years after it happened.
Jeff
Brahharb
(9/6/04)
Reply russia Star the school is known as Middle School Number One.
Yes I agree Columbine and what happened in Russia are two different things what I was refering to was it happening in the U.S. with Osama's group or other groups that exist. Nine of the hostage takers in Russia where supposedly Arab the other ten where militants. Could it be a test run for the future or give AlQiada an idea for the future?
Putin I don't trust. Didn't back the U.S. in Iraq yet hes got terrorism in his own back yard and was more than willing to accept 20 tons of medical supplies from the U.S. Plus the fact of hiding information from his own people on the hostage crisis. Not that the U.S. ever does that.LOL
mama4paws
(9/6/04)
Quote:Putin I don't trust.
I agree with that one. I agree with all you are saying what would be better to attack than Americas future.....the kids.
I have tried not to voice that idea because....it is a terrible thought......and all possible.
Scary............
My two cents,
~~Mama~~
We are not born to hate....it is Learned!!
starviego
(9/7/04)
Reply The Hook Source: www.rbcnews.com
Published: May 8, 2004
Police suspected of complicity in school siege
RBC, 05.09.2004, Moscow 12:30:23.1, could have had accomplices among police officers, said Valery Andreyev, head of the North Ossetian Department of the Federal Security Service. He said initial investigation of the attackers' route suggested a conspiracy involving the police. At the same time, he did not rule out that the police officers might have been forced to help the terrorists.
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Comment: It's deja vu all over again!
Brahharb
(9/8/04)
Reply Ridge Ridge: Terrorists hope to disrupt election
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, left, talks to reporters about the latest techniques being used to monitor, manage and secure the nation's borders, during a tour of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's National Targeting Center in Northern Virginia, Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2004. Ridge is joined at right by Robert C. Bonner, commissioner of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection. As the three-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks approaches, Ridge emphasized new port protections and border patrols that are now in operation to protect Americans. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON -- Terrorists still hope to disrupt the U.S. democratic process even though the presidential nominating conventions and other high-profile gatherings this summer went off without incident, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Tuesday.
Threat reporting over the last several months has been "consistent, general and credible" and indicated the al-Qaida network is trying to push ahead with its plans, Ridge said.
Although large events this summer were not attacked, he said, "that in no way diminishes the level of vigilance, awareness and concern that we have during this entire process."
Ridge commented during a morning visit to the National Targeting Center in Northern Virginia. Operated by the Customs and Border Protection agency, the center secures the nation's borders and ports with a focus on keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the country.
Currently, financial centers in northern New Jersey, New York City and Washington are at high alert because of recently discovered reconnaissance of buildings there that apparently was done by al-Qaida in 2000 and 2001.
Alert levels remain at orange for those areas, the second highest on the national five-point scale. Ridge said authorities review intelligence on a daily basis to determine whether to lower them.
Speaking to the National Press Club later, Ridge said every day that goes by without incident gives authorities more time to make the country safer.
Ridge made the appearances five days before the third anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a week after militants raided a Russian school in an attack that eventually killed more than 400 people including 156 children.
Asked whether an attack could come to a school here, Ridge said parents have had to consider school safety long before 9/11, given tragic events, such as Columbine, that did not involve international terror. Should there be lessons learned overseas, "If we can apply them to making America more secure, we will," Ridge said.
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Anyone else see the video tape the Russian killers made for recruiting? Star it seems that a lot of people where envolved with this and a long time in planning.
mama4paws
(9/8/04)
Re: Ridge Brahharb,
I agree it does look like it took a whole lot of planning.
I still think you want to hurt the future of a nation you go after the kids because they are the future......that scares the hell out of me.
My two cents,
~~Mama~~
We are not born to hate....it is Learned!!
starviego
(1/24/05)
Reply "Russians hit probe of 300 hostage deaths" From the NYTimes News Service of 1-22-05:
"Hundreds of residents of the southern Russian town of Beslan blocked a highway for a second day yesterday, protesting their government's handling of the investigation of the school hostage siege......
"They have also voiced no confidence in a commission of the Russian Parlaiment that is investigating the terrorist attack and the government's bungled handling of the siege,....."
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[I hope they get somewhere with their tactics. The Columbine parents never got very far with their efforts, if I recall.]
