An escalation on the Eastern front...
September 1, 2004
Armed Attackers Seize School in Russia
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:12 a.m. ET
MOSCOW (AP) -- Attackers wearing suicide-bomb belts seized a school in a Russian region bordering Chechnya on Wednesday and were holding hundreds of hostages, reportedly including 200 children. The assault came a day after a suicide bomber killed 10 people in Moscow.
At least two people were killed, including a father who had brought his child to the school and was shot when he challenged the attackers, said Fatima Khabolova, a spokeswoman for the regional parliament. A hostage-taker also was killed and nine people were injured, she said.
The seizure began after a ceremony marking the first day of the Russian school year, reports said, when it was likely that many parents had accompanied their children to the school. The attackers warned they would blow up the school, which covers grades 1-11, if police tried to storm it and forced children to stand at the windows, said Alexei Polyansky, a police spokesman for southern Russia.
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 two strikes came just a week after two Russian planes carrying 90 people crashed almost simultaneously in what officials also say were terrorist bombings.
``In essence, war has been declared on us, where the enemy is unseen and there is no front,'' Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said.
The latest violence also appears to be timed around last Sunday's presidential elections in Chechnya, a Kremlin-backed move aimed at undermining support for the insurgents by establishing a modicum of civil order in the war-shattered republic. The previous Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed along with more than 20 others in a bombing on May 9.
Gunfire broke out after the school raid and at least three teachers and two police officers were wounded, Polyansky said. More gunfire and several explosions were heard about three hours later, the Interfax news agency reported.
Polyansky said most of the attackers were wearing suicide bomb belts.
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