LAT:Killers Set Terms,Mother Chooses(mothers,babies free,if sibling left)

[DeepModem Mom]

THE WORLD
Killers Set Terms, a Mother Chooses
Militants offer a woman and her baby freedom -- but only if she leaves her other child behind.

By Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer


BESLAN, Russia — Zalina Dzandarova cradles her son Alan as he sleeps with his small face buried against her stomach. He is the child Dzandarova was able to save. The child she chose to save, really.

It is the other one, little Alana, her 6-year-old daughter, whose image torments her: Alana clutching her hand, Alana crying and calling after her. Alana's sobs disappearing into the distance as Dzandarova walked out of Middle School No. 1 here Thursday, clutching 2-year-old Alan in her arms.

Guerrillas armed with automatic rifles and explosive belts who are holding hundreds of hostages at the small provincial school in southern Russia allowed 26 women and children to leave. About a dozen mothers, like Dzandarova, were allowed to take only one child, forced to leave another behind....

***

Violence often selects its victims randomly, but seldom is a mother asked to make a Sophie's choice: Save one child and leave behind another, possibly to face death. The standoff in North Ossetia republic involving about 20 guerrillas — most likely linked to the neighboring separatist republic of Chechnya or adjacent Ingushetia — has stunned a nation accustomed to war and its horrors after the many ethnic and territorial conflicts that accompanied the breakup of the Soviet Union....


NOTE: As I post, the hostage crisis may be reaching an end.


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mother3sep03,1,360277.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[kayell]

1. That is so cruel

no matter what happens, they have destroyed those mothers.

:cry:

[arcos]

2. omg, this is horrible...

:cry:

[0007]

3. Any choice one would make in this situation is a terrible one

especially the mother that will live with the nightmare forever.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. I cannot IMAGINE having to make that choice --

what an unspeakable tragedy for all of these people.