Russian TV shows footage taken by hostage takers

[Kellanved]

MOSCOW: Russia's NTV television showed graphic footage shot by the militants who took more than a thousand hostages in a school in Beslan in the south of the country last week.


The pictures showed militants including a masked and heavily armed man and a woman in Arab-style black headdress, as well as hundreds of hostages sitting in the gymnasium which later became a battleground. At least 335 people, around a half of them children, died when Russian troops stormed the school.

Blood was smeared on the floor. Bombs hung from a basketball hoop and from a wire suspended across the room. Another lay on the floor in plastic container.

One militant squatted, apparently working on a bomb with tape and wire clippers. The few spaces left by the hostages, including women fanning themselves in the heat and children with their hands on their heads, were strewn with wires and what appeared to be bomb-making equipment.


...

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3027997a12,00.html

The complete video was on a TV a minute ago; there'll be a streaming video soon

On Edit: Video
http://news.bbc.co.uk/

[Placebo]

1. Scary

:scared:

[Junkdrawer]

2. There's something about this whole incident that bothers me...

That is beyond the fact that it raises primal anger.... :mad: :mad:

This was a well thought out operation. It could not possibly end well. It's only outcome would be to inflame anti-Chechen passions world-wide.

So...WHY DID THEY DO IT?????

[Maple]

3. Doesn't make any

sense, does it?

Not for the Chechens anyway.

[cthrumatrix]

4. could they have been "brain washed"? whats the upside?

[Junkdrawer]

9. This is so "over the top" that suspicion starts to fall on Putin...and he

is throwing it back to the US.

I'm sorry. This is not your ordinary terror attack.

[foo_bar]

11. in DU terms, a false flag operation is an ordinary terror attack

[geek tragedy]

16. And Abu Ghraib was not an ordinary prison.

Do you think that was Iraqis faking it?

Evil people do things that are ultimately counterproductive to their causes all the time.

[maxsolomon]

5. why did they do it?

because they're TERRORISTS! f-ing duh! they spread terror. they PLANNED to die.

it proves that massive military campaigns cannot eradicate terror. and after 2 planes & the school, russia is making negotiation overtures. that's why they did it.

[Junkdrawer]

7. "russia is making negotiation overtures"...

Could you provide a link for that?

[Xithras]

6. Read in another report...

...that the terrorists were actually nice the first day, and that one of their first requests was that Putin himself come to negotiate with them. The survivors are saying that the terrorists absolutely flipped out when Putin refused their request, and became barbaric and cruel...knifing babies, raping teenaged girls, refusing water to the children, screaming and yelling at people for caughing, etc.

IMO, the whole thing was a setup to kill Putin. I have no idea if they originally intended to kill all of the children (probably not...there are also reports that two of the Russian terrorists shot their fellow terrorists when they began executing the kids), but they certainly weren't the prime targets. The Chechens see Putin as their most hated enemy, and probably conceived of this as an elaborate plan to draw Putin in close enough to either shoot him or blow him up with a bomb.

When Putin refused to come, the whole plan began to unravel, and the terrorists were left in an untenable position. They couldn't possibly gain any concessions from the Russian government, but asking for their freedom would have been seen as cowardly back in Chechnya. They had painted themselves into a corner and saw no way out. When the shooting started, the hardcore al Queda arab types began killing the kids, and the rest tried to escape or surrender.

[Junkdrawer]

8. Are you saying that their "plan" was to get Putin to come in person...

Yeah, that was going to happen. Why didn't they ask for Bush too? :eyes:

[Xithras]

12. They DID ask for that

Nobody ever said that terrorists were intelligent.

Perhaps the thought process was that Putin would be forced to respond if they seized a big enough, showy enough target, and they thought that an elementary school full of children would be that target :shrug:

It's the only reason I can think of to explain why they would ask for Putin personally, and then flip out so badly when he refused to come to Beslan. It was a very odd request.

[stickdog]

14. Please link this report for us so we can evaluate it for ourselves.

Thank you.

[allemand]

10. "Voice in the background speaking Arabic can be heard"

according to the BBC. They just showed the video.

On edit.: Now they are saying that it was a prayer in Arabic. That doesn't proof anything, of course.

[Junkdrawer]

13. Oh look, now NPR is asking what school administrators HERE are...

doing to prevent such an attack...

al Qaeda is coming after OUR kids next....

Anybody want to bet me polls are taken that show Bush is preferred over Kerry in terms of protecting our kids?

http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=3894436

[geek tragedy]

15. It would be criminal negligence not to consider the possibility now.

Silly paranoid theories aside, that is.

[girl gone mad]

17. I've considered it for a long time...

as has any parent who has seen "The Siege".

Face it, our schools just aren't that safe and Bush has done nothing to diminish the threat of terrorism.

[geek tragedy]

19. The Israelis posted armed guards outside of every school

after terrorists seized a high school there that wound up killing a bunch of students.

Just something for people who think the Israelis have handled the Palestinian issue so well--how can a society that needs to post armed guards around their grade schools not go bonkers?

[FlemingsGhost]

18. I hope Russians are smarter than Americans ...

Both are being manipulated in a very similar fashion.