More Than 200 Killed in Russian School Shootout

[mourningdove92]

By Richard Ayton and Oliver Bullough

BESLAN, Russia (Reuters) - Russian troops stormed a school on Friday, blaming Chechen hostage-takers for a bloody battle in which more than 200 people -- dozens of them children -- were killed and hundreds were wounded.

Terrified children, some naked and others with bloodied faces, ran screaming for safety after a 53-hour ordeal at the hands of gunmen with bombs strapped to their waists. Machinegun fire rattled out and helicopters clattered overhead.

The military operation against the gunmen, "who put up lengthy resistance in the school is now over," a Russian official overseeing the mission was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency late on Friday night.

Russian troops -- with special forces spearheading the storming -- killed 27 hostage-takers and captured three alive, officials told Interfax.

Burly soldiers grabbed the fleeing children and rushed them to waiting medics. Some had blood streaming from wounds.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=6149834

[Skittles]

1. what kind of world is this?

what is WRONG with people?

[saigon68]

2. Its all about money, power, religion and hate.

Its been that way for centuries.

[TheWraith]

3. I take it the Russians have never heard of the idea of TACTICS.

Between this, and gassing that theater awhile back, it seems like the Russians desperately need a lesson in what contitutes acceptable force in a hostage situation. What do you want to bet a huge number of the casualties were hit by the indiscriminate fire of the military troops storming the school?

[Xithras]

4. Actually...

Preliminary reports seem to indicate that most of the dead were located in a gymnasium that exploded and burned before the Russians ever reached it. Some of the kids who survived are saying that they were soaked in gasoline, and when the shooting started one of the female terrorists blew herself up and killed a lot of the kids around her, setting the blaze. More than 100 bodies have been counted in that one spot alone.

One of the saddest aspects of this is that many of the other children were executed by the terrorists, and that the executed children tend to be the youngest. The older kids were able to run away once the shooting started, but the five and six year olds, already weakened by two days without food or water, weren't able to escape. Dozens of them have been found with bullet wounds to the back and heads, indicating that they were executed in cold blood.

[TheLastMohican]

13. I take it you don't know jackshit about anything

This was an assault operation. The russian troops had to respond to the terrorists who started to kill children while those were running for their lives. This was not a prepared assault. It is a loose loose situation for everybody involved, it could have been much worse, if the spetsnaz and Alfa haven't responded quickly to the situation.

10 of the best spetsnaz operatives are killed because they were covering the children with their bodies. RIP to them, it takes a lot of courage and commitment.

P.S. I am tired to see stupid remarks on the situation by people who obviously are full of glee and gloating "Look, the Russian have fucked up again" Grow up, people!

[Junkdrawer]

14. 1. Drop the personal attacks. 2. This incident seems to have...

started when Russians entered the building to retrieve the dead bodies...


Just before 0900 GMT, emergency workers enter the school to recover the bodies of dead hostages, thought to be about 15.
Minutes later, explosions and gunfire are heard and, at about 0915, a group of hostages of different ages manages to escape.

The order of events is still unclear. But one eyewitness has told Russian media that one of the many bombs stuck with tape around the gym fell and exploded. The roof caved in and hostages started to run.

The attackers fired at them as they fled, prompting the troops outside to shoot back.
....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/world/04/russian_s/html/2.stm

[jmcgowanjm]

5. If I remember, the Chechens said after the Theater Fiasco

that next time there would be no negotiating.

A President, just replaced, 2 planes, a subway,
Ingushetia, and now this.

Somebody is coordinating w/ somebody.

And there will be more.

And how many know that the only way for oil
from the Caucasus to Russia is thru Grozny?

More Kosovos, more Chechnya's, more Iraqs.

I don't see how more people could've been killed,
wounded. I have to believe that these folks
were put here to send us some kind of message
and they're in a better place now.

[Xithras]

7. Can you back that up?

I was under the impression that the pipelines for Caucasus oil were running through Dagestan, to the east of Chechnya.

[Junkdrawer]

8. I started a thread that touches on this...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2305375&mesg_id=2305375

[legin]

9. This is one report how believable i don't know :shrug:

<<snip>>

A major oil pipeline carries oil from fields in Baku on the Caspian Sea and Chechnya toward the Ukraine. Grozny has a major oil refinery along this pipeline. For Russia it is important that the oil pipelines and routes they take to be sold to the western markets also meet their needs. However, there are various pipelines in discussion that does not involve Russia.

<<snip>>

http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Chechnya.asp

[jmcgowanjm]

15. the first google: Grozny Refinery yields Operation Unthinkable

From WWll, when Brits thought that Germans were
going to capture Caucasus:

But every attempt should be made to keep the priority of (7)
and (8) above that of (10) below."

Other targets identified were port facilities and oil storage
tanks at Poti, the Tuapse refinery area, specific locations
along the Grozny-Armavir and Baku-Batum railways,
the Sabunchi and Surakhani refineries at Baku, and
the Krasnovodsk refinery on the eastern shore of the
Caspian Sea, which was within range of Wellington
bombers operating with a reduced bombload from Mosul.
Air bases were even then being prepared at Mosul, Qiyara
and Ain Zalah in Iraq. Other bases recently seized from
hostile Vichy French forces in Syria could also be utilized.

I tell you what. Just go here. You might even find out
how ordinary Chechens refine their own gasoline.
Now that's something I wish I'd learned in school.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=grozny+refinery

BTW-did they ever prosecute those Federal personnel
caught stacking explosives in the basement of that
Moscow apt. back in 1999?

[jmcgowanjm]

16. RussianGen Boris Gromov-(Grozny Pipeline)reason for 1st ChechenWar

Boston, 20 December 1999 (RFE/RL) -- In late December
1994, within days of
the first Russian attacks, Western experts pointed to
the strategic
importance of the Caspian pipeline route running
through Grozny. Russia's
attempt to retake control of Chechnya by force came less
than three months
after the first Caspian offshore oil deal was
signed.

http://www.b-info.com/news/1999-12/text/dec20b.rfe

Chechnya is no longer able to cope(Help me,I'm drowning
in wealth-right) with the lucrative oil production of 835,000
tons from its own 1,500 sources, as well as the 120,000
tons annually coming through the Russian pipeline
from Azerbaijan.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/oct1999/chec-o02.shtml

[bemildred]

10. Not amateur, not coincidence, I think you have that right.

Kali walks the earth these days.

[PA Democrat]

6. The TV coverage I saw of this was heartbreaking

Both CNN and NBC showed the same footage. The reporter that was on the scene was British and he was clearly shaken. The pictures were horribly graphic, showing the charred bodies under the rubble of the gym.

[James T. Kirk]

11. A terror attack on schoolchildren. Mind boggling.

These terrorists make me sick.

[Yupster]

12. There will be enormous pressure

on Putin to react violently.

[emad]

17. Toll passes 320 - Saturday lunchtime, BBC News:

Agony as school death toll rises

Snip:
Relatives of victims of the school hostage siege in southern Russia are facing an agonising wait for news as the death toll rises.
More than 320 bodies have been pulled from the rubble of the school so far, officials say, the day after the siege ended in a bloodbath.

People have been scouring the wards of local hospitals and searching through corpses at the morgue. Meanwhile President Putin visited some of the hundreds wounded in the siege.

The Russian leader confirmed there had been no plans to storm the building.

Work to clear the school has been slowed by the presence of mines in the building, where militants demanding Chechen independence held children and adults for three days.
More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3627030.stm

[annabanana]

18. On CBS this morning..........building boobytrapping built in?

The report said that the explosives had been put in place by builders who had been renovating the school earlier. Anybody else hear this ?

[Aidoneus]

20. crazy, posted a minute apart..

Not from CBS (don't watch US news channels), but I have heard this mentioned. It comes from the Russian wire service Interfax and has since been picked up--GoogleNews has several mentions now that I look at it.

[Aidoneus]

19. There was an anonymous official in a recent Interfax report..

This said that the building had been prepared in advance, with most of the explosives put in place in the course of construction work over the summer.

Another report from the Bulgarian business paper Novonite suggests a hundred deaths among the military units that stormed the building.

[vincent_vega_lives]

21. Graphic pics

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040903/D84SFJS01.html

To think these kids, like kids anywhere, were likley nervous, excited about the first day of school.

If the Chechens want to ensure the world is united against them this is a good way to go about it.