Belsan, Tough decision :(

Discussion in 'Warbirds International' started by bizerk, Sep 1, 2004.

  1. bizerk

    bizerk Well-Known Member

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    Updated: 01:54 PM EDT
    Hundreds of Hostages Taken at Russian School
    Eight Killed After Gunmen Seize Building; Chechen Rebels Blamed
    By MUSA SADULAYEV, AP

    BELSAN, Russia (Sept. 1) -- More than a dozen militants wearing suicide-bomb belts seized a southern Russian school in a region bordering Chechnya on Wednesday, taking hostage about 400 people - half of them children - and threatening to blow up the building if police storm it. As many as eight people have been reported killed, one of them a school parent.

    Hours into the desperate standoff, security officials said they had made brief contact with the hostage-takers. Russian special forces wearing camouflage and carrying heavy-caliber machine guns surrounded Middle School No. 1. About 1,000 people, mostly parents, were massed the three-story building in the town of Belsen, demanding information and accusing the government of failing to protect their children.



    AP
    Russian soldiers rescue a child from school in North Ossetia.


    Kazbek Dzantiyev, head of the North Ossetia region's Interior Ministry, said that the hostages have threatened ''for every destroyed fighter, they will kill 50 children and for every injured fighter - 20 (children),'' the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.

    At one point, a girl wearing a floral print dress and a red bow in her hair fled the school, her hand held by a flak-jacketed soldier. An older woman followed them. Ruslan Ayamov, spokesman for North Ossetia's Interior Ministry told The Associated Press that 12 children and one adult managed to escape after hiding in the building's boiler room.

    The attack was the latest blamed on secessionist Chechen rebels, coming a day after a suicide bomber killed nine people in Moscow and a week after near-simultaneous explosions blamed on terrorists caused two Russian planes to crash, killing all 90 people on board. The surge in violence was apparently timed around last Sunday's Chechen presidential election.

    ''In essence, war has been declared on us, where the enemy is unseen and there is no front,'' Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said.

    President Vladimir Putin interrupted his working holiday Wednesday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi for a second time and returned to the capital. On arrival at the airport, he held an immediate meeting with the heads of Russia's Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service, the Interfax news agency said.


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    The standoff began after a ceremony marking the first day of the Russian school year, when it was likely that many parents had accompanied their children. About 17 militants, men and women, stormed the three-story building and herded captives into the gymnasium. They forced children to stand at the windows and warned they would blow up the school if police intervened, said Alexei Polyansky, a police spokesman for southern Russia.

    ''I was standing near the gates, music was playing, when I saw three armed people running with guns. At first I though it was a joke when they fired in the air and we fled,'' a teenager, Zarubek Tsumartov, said on Russian television.

    Hours after the seizure, Regional Federal Security Service chief Valery Andreyev said on NTV television that negotiations with the hostage-takers ''are just, just beginning'' and that brief contact had not allowed authorities to evaluate the situation in Belsen, located 10 miles north of the regional capital of Vladikavkaz

    The ITAR-Tass news agency, citing local hospitals, reported that seven people died of injuries in the hospital and one was killed at the site during the seizure.

    But Regional Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev told The Associated Press that two civilians were killed and nine hospitalized, and that two bodies were visible near the school. Interfax cited a health official as saying four people were killed, but the emergencies ministry later said the toll was two.


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    Dzgoyev said a girl was also lying near the building, presumably wounded, but officials said the area could not be approached because it was coming under fire.

    Fatima Khabalova, spokeswoman for the regional parliament, earlier said one of the dead was a father who brought his child to the school and was shot when he tried to resist the raiders. She also said at least nine people had been injured in gunfire, including three teachers and two police officers.

    Suspicion in both the school attack and the Moscow bombing fell on Chechen rebels or their sympathizers, but there was no evidence of any direct link. The attacks came around Chechnya's presidential elections, a Kremlin-backed vote aimed at undermining support for the insurgents by establishing a modicum of civil order in the war-shattered republic. The previous president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed with more than 20 others in a bombing May 9.

    The militants inside the school released one hostage with a list of their demands, including the freedom of fighters detained over a series of attacks on police facilities in neighboring Ingushetia in June, ITAR-Tass reported.

    They also seek talks with regional officials and a well-known pediatrician, Leonid Roshal, who aided hostages during the deadly seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002, news reports said.

    Parents of the seized children recorded a videocassette appeal to Putin to fulfill the terrorists' demands, Khabalova said. The text of the appeal was not immediately available.

    The violence was the latest to plague the government of Putin, who came to power vowing to crush the Chechen rebellion. Terrorism fears in Russia have risen markedly following the plane crashes and the suicide bombing outside a Moscow subway station Tuesday night. The blast by a female attacker tore through a busy area between the station and a department store, killing nine people and wounded more than 50.

    Authorities said Tuesday that 10 people were killed, but Interfax reported Wednesday that Moscow health officials revised that, saying one man who died in a hospital was not a victim of the blast.

    A militant Muslim web site published a statement claiming responsibility for the bombing on behalf of the ''Islambouli Brigades,'' a group that also claimed responsibility for the airliner crashes. The statements could not immediately be verified.

    The statement said Tuesday's bombing was a blow against Putin, ''who slaughtered Muslims time and again.'' Putin has refused to negotiate with rebels in predominantly Muslim Chechnya who have fought Russian forces for most of the past decade, saying they must be wiped out.

    As an American, My heart goes out to all invovled. I do hope all works out ok. I always have said do not give in to the terrorists demands and still do but this is a very difficult situation. I still will not give in, because they will do it again and again. and if they do kill anyone these madmen! then i think the prisoners that are being held should be killed, and perhaps even more. Fight fire with fire. What ever happens my heart goes out to All innocent :( it is a dirty cowardly act these rebels are doing. with this event and the others in the past week. Anyhow all i can say is be strong my Russian friends. Myself and America hope some peaceful solution can be reached with no one hurt. :rose:

    bullet <S>
     
  2. airfax

    airfax Well-Known Member

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    I agree that what bullet said. Guerilla warfare is a different thing, but taking kids as hostages is an act of shame. As long as they use these kind of measures, they certainly won't any sympathy from me.

    And for eye for an eye, in Nepal mosque got burned by an angry mob, since 12 nepalis hostages were killed in Iraq by terrorists. So by killing those hostages, they succeeded to make things for Nepal muslim minority only worse. (Saw it on BBC world)

    airfax :@drunk:

    (there's something seriously wrong with mankind...)
     
  3. Glas

    Glas Well-Known Member

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    Prayers for all the families affected by the scourge of terrorism, everywhere.

    -glas-
     
  4. sebbo

    sebbo Well-Known Member

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    Sebbo is speechless.....

    :'(
     
  5. big-jo

    big-jo Well-Known Member

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  6. Allsop

    Allsop Well-Known Member

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    Man, If you wanted to destroy the people of the future, go up to some guy and kick him in the nuts! Sterilize the fucker, old school, dont take a bunch of me and hold me hostage!
     
  7. -afi--

    -afi-- Well-Known Member

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    :rose:

    If i was religious, all my prayers would go out to them.

    Maybe I'll just say a few in case.
     
  8. bizerk

    bizerk Well-Known Member

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    Troops Storm Russian School; 100 Bodies Found
    Militants Still Holding Hostages in Building; Captors May Have al-Qaida Link
    By MIKE ECKEL, AP

    BESLAN, Russia (Sept. 3) -- Commandos stormed a school Friday in southern Russia and battled separatist rebels holding 1,200 hostages, as crying children, some naked and covered in blood, fled through explosions and gunfire. An official said the death toll could be significantly higher than 150.

    The ITAR-Tass news agency reported 646 people were hospitalized, including 332 children, in the latest soft-target attack blamed on Chechen separatists and their allies in more than a decade of violence.


    School Siege





    Hours after the midday assault, three of the separatist rebels were reportedly still blockaded in a school basement, trading fire with security forces. A Federal Security Service official said militants were still holding hostages - children among them.

    The school was largely secured late Friday afternoon, but a large explosion erupted from inside toward nightfall, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. Soon after, the crisis operations center said fighting had ended in the basement but that two militants may still be at large.

    Twenty militants were killed, including 10 Arabs, said Valery Andreyev, the top Federal Security Service official in the region. Channel One TV reported late Friday that three of the attackers were arrested after trying to escape in civilian dress. A member of an elite security unit died saving two young girls, ITAR-Tass reported.

    The hostage-takers had been demanding independence for Chechnya, and the Arab presence among the attackers would support President Vladimir Putin's contention that al-Qaida terrorists were involved in the Chechen conflict, where Muslim fighters have been fighting Russian forces in a brutal war of independence on and off since the early 1990s.


    On the campaign trail in Wisconsin, President Bush said the hostage siege was ''another grim reminder'' of the lengths to which terrorists will go.

    A hostage who escaped told Associated Press Television News that the militants numbered 28, including women wearing camouflage uniforms. The hostage, who identified himself only as Teimuraz, said the militants began wiring the school with explosives as soon as they took control.

    The militants, some with explosives strapped to their bodies, stormed the school in Beslan on Wednesday morning and kept the hundreds of children along with parents who had been bringing them for the first day of school and other adults in the sweltering gymnasium, refusing to let in food or water.

    ''They didn't let me go to the toilet for three days, not once. They never let me drink or go to the toilet,'' Teimuraz told APTN.




    The chaotic climax to the standoff began around 1 p.m. Friday, when explosions collapsed part of the school roof and gunfire erupted from inside the building. Security forces, who officials said had not planned to storm the school, moved in.

    After the hostage-takers fled, more than 100 bodies were found in the gymnasium, some apparently killed in the roof collapse, said a cameraman for the British network ITN reported and a correspondent for Russia's Interfax news agency, who both said they saw the bodies.

    Aslanbek Aslakhanov, Putin's top aide on Chechnya, said security forces did not plan to storm the building, but were prompted to move by the first explosions. Witnesses said the militants opened fire on fleeing hostages and then began to escape themselves.

    Russian forces had held back, perhaps remembering the deadly outcome two years ago when security troops used nerve gas before storming a Moscow theater where Chechen terrorists had taken about 800 hostages. The nerve gas debilitated the captors but also was the cause of most of the 129 hostage deaths.

    Gunfire rang out for hours Friday afternoon as security forces chased hostage-takers, who split into small groups as they fled. Interfax and the ITAR-Tass news agency reported the three militants holed up in the basement may include the head of the group. Another group took refuge in a nearby house where tanks moved in.

    Huge columns of smoke rose from the school. Windows were shattered, part of roof was gone and another part was charred. Commandos, residents and journalists scurried around the building and soldiers climbed inside through a lower floor window, all the glass missing.

    People ran through the streets, and the wounded were carried off on stretchers. An Associated Press reporter saw ambulances speeding by, the windows streaked with blood. Four armed men in civilian clothes ran by, shouting, ''A militant ran this way.''

    Soldiers and men in civilian clothes carried children - some naked, some clad only in underpants, some covered in blood - to a temporary hospital set up behind an armored personnel carrier. One child had a bandage on her head, others had bandaged limbs. Some women, newly freed from the school, fainted.

    The children drank eagerly from bottles of water given to them once they reached safety. Many of the children were naked or only partly clothed because of the stifling heat in the gymnasium.

    ''I am helping you,'' a man dressed in camouflage told a crying girl. Women gathered around, trying to soothe her, saying ''It's all right. It's all right.''

    Sixty of the bodies in the gymnasium have been identified, said Andreyev, the chief of the Federal Security Service in North Ossetia, the republic where the school is located.

    A nurse spread clean sheets on stretchers, and told AP that Russian officials expected ''very many'' wounded.

    The White House branded the hostage-taking ''barbaric'' and ''despicable'' and said responsibility for dozens of lost lives rests with the terrorists. ''The United States stands side-by-side with Russia in our global fight against terrorism,'' spokesman Scott McClellan said.

    North Ossetia's president, Alexander Dzasokhov, said Friday the militants had demanded independence for Chechnya, the first official word connecting the hostage-taking to the conflict that has fueled Russia's worst terror attacks.

    Friday's violence began after militants had agreed to let Russia retrieve the bodies of people killed early in the raid. Explosions went off as the emergency personnel went to get the bodies at around 1 p.m., collapsing part of the roof of the building, and hostages took the noise as a signal to flee, officials said.

    Militants opened fire on fleeing hostages and security forces returned fire. Once the hostage-takers sought to escape, Russian officials apparently made the decision to storm the building.

    The militants had reportedly threatened to blow up the building if authorities tried to storm it, but all indications suggested the explosions began before the assault.

    The hostage-takers' identities were murky. Lev Dzugayev, a North Ossetian official, said the attackers might be from Chechnya or Ingushetia. Law enforcement sources in North Ossetia and Ingushetia, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attackers were believed to include Chechens, Ingush, Russians and a North Ossetian suspected of participating in the Ingushetia violence.

    Insurgents fought an earlier war for Chechen independence, a conflict that ended in stalemate. In the years since, the rebels and their sympathizers have increasingly taken to assaults and attacks outside the tiny republic.

    Negotiators said the hostage-takers had repeatedly refused offers of food and water throughout the standoff.

    ''They are very cruel people, we are facing a ruthless enemy,'' said Leonid Roshal, a pediatrician involved in the negotiations. ''I talked with them many times on my cell phone, but every time I ask to give food, water and medicine to the hostages they refuse my request.''

    The school seizure came a day after a suspected Chechen suicide bomber blew herself up outside a Moscow subway station, killing nine people, and just over a week after 90 people died in two plane crashes that are suspected to have been blown up by bombers also linked to Chechnya.

    On Thursday, the militants freed about 26 hostages, all women and children.


    09-03-04 14:15 EDT
     
  9. airfax

    airfax Well-Known Member

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    Sometimes I'm shamed to be (half)human... :mad:
    :rose: to all who lost a child in this sadful event..
    airfax
     
  10. rgreat

    rgreat FH Developer

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    Parents outside school have spotted one terrorist carried on stretcher by soldiers.

    They have pulled him out, beaten him, and then shoot to the death.

    Way to go, i'd say.
    And no, i'm not ashamed.
    I would help if i could.
    Around 4 of them are still on the run.

    P.S. More then 150 dead children, not to count parents and teachers. Can you imagine that?
    There are more cruel acts on their hands, but i will not go further on that here.
    I guess there will be much less chechens still in Osetia at the end of the month.
    Osetins are not very forgiving on such acts. It looks like planned diversion to further destabilze caucasus region.
    Transferred some money for the victims.
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2004
  11. -frog-

    -frog- Well-Known Member

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    WTG Parents... I would not be ashamed too.

    Sorry but there's a barrier between war and plain barbarism... it streaches along the civilian/military line. Everyone attacking civilians and not military forces should be hanged on his balls and taken apart using a blunt axe.

    As for the victims of the tragedy:
    :rose:
     
  12. -afi--

    -afi-- Well-Known Member

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    Good for those parents, I would have done the same in their place.

    :rose: for those poor children :(
     
  13. rgreat

    rgreat FH Developer

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  14. big-jo

    big-jo Well-Known Member

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  15. bizerk

    bizerk Well-Known Member

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    No reason to be ashamed, i would have done the same. It was a very cowardly thing to do. I agree with frog, War and gorilla warfare are one thing, but to purposely do this act is dispicable. I think the prisoners that the rebels wanted released are shitting bricks and rightly so. There fate doesn't look good. Perhaps for every child and adult killed, 50 rebel prisoners should lose their lives. i think this is what the rebels stated they would do if their captured buddies were harmed. Once again be strong my russian friends, I feel great sorrow on this day :( :rose: :rose: :rose:
     
  16. ramzey

    ramzey Well-Known Member

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    (') for victims, :(
     
  17. heartc

    heartc Well-Known Member

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    This is just plain terrorism. Those guys are just scum, from the same scum pool that flew two airplanes into the WTC. Same scum that bombed two russian airliners short before the school siege. Same scum that bombed the trains in Madrid. Same scum responsible for the terrorist attacks in Bali, in Djerba. Istanbul. And yes, the same scum that blows up school busses and cafees in Israel to destroy every possible peace progress there from the get-go. Those guys don't take prisoners, they don't want the kind of peace, relationship and world we, the sane men, are seeking. They are seeking something else and are trying to reach it by the most gruesome and criminal means. In case of Chechnia, it's an Islamist god state next to Russia they try to establish. This is what they want their "freedom" for. Sure the majority of the Chechen people is made up of sane men, just like everywhere else on this world. This is why it is not a Muslim vs. Christian thing. But it is an Islamist vs. civilized world thing, that makes a difference, and you got to call it by that name. Because it will be those kind of guys who will be in command of that state they are trying to establish. I support Russia all the way in not allowing that to happen.
    These guys are also connected all over the world. The chechen "freedom fighters" or "seperatists" are being financially and logistically supported by their friends from other Islamists groups like Al-Quaeda. We should know it: We can talk here in this forum with people from all over the world. These guys don't live in caves either - they just show it occasionally that way when presenting themselves to the media. In reality, they got plenty of money and are united in support of each other while engaging the civilized world in THEIR holy war, not ours. It is not our idea. But they decided to become throat-cutting enemies of us, so we have to destroy them and anyone who provides support to them. Hell, the hijackers of 9/11 lived in Hamburg for several years, were normal neighbours to us, had their religious freedom and everything else they could wish for in a civilized world, but hey, they had something else in mind. And as far as we know now, not all of the Belsan terrorists were even Chechens, but there were Arabs among them, too. Islamism is conducting an actual war on us, and I don't want to just sit there and wait until my loved ones are blown to pieces, while looking for root causes and blaming ourselves for things these guys are not even interested in. It would be like asking the Jews why they were hated by the Nazis. Nazis were/are of the same kind like those Islamist Jihad "warriors". Just madmen. And in case of the Nazis, everyone could see what happens if these madmen actually control a state, an army, and take part in international policy. Madness will happen, cause it was madness they gained their position with.

    People who fly airliners into civil targets, bomb cafees, even send their children to bomb those cafees or who siege a school full of children and their mothers - those people are mad-men. I want to see any of us doing that kind of crap for whatever reason. And they got to have no place in this world and not even the right to exist and shouldn't even dream about establishing a state next to Russia under their command. We already got enough of the kind that needs to be taken out one way or the other or at least surpressed to end this mess. This can only be achieved when the civilized world stands together united instead of harming itself in completely misplaced self-hatred. We should know it's the Islamists who take care of that point - we should take care of taking them out instead.

    Regards
    heartc
     
    Last edited: Sep 4, 2004
  18. -afi--

    -afi-- Well-Known Member

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    OK heartc, whe n i'm notg so drunk i' m going tro respond to the fact that you are a fucking bigot.

    give me til the mornigna nd you're gonna get some antgi boidgty bacsk ast you

    i'm drukn, soryr
     
  19. -Kharn-

    -Kharn- Well-Known Member

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  20. gryphon

    gryphon Well-Known Member

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    :( i would like to post simpathies for everyone involved, and refrain from posting any thoughts on these horific acts. Im sadened but dont wish to say anything and be miss interpeted.