400 taken hostage at Russian school
Staff and agencies
Wednesday September 1, 2004
Up to 400 people, including 200 schoolchildren, were today taken hostage in a school in southern Russia. The attackers threatened to blow up the buildings should the security forces attempt to intervene, according to Reuters.
The Russian security service, the FSB, confirmed that between 17 and 30 attackers, some wearing suicide-bomb belts, invaded the school in the city of Beslan this morning. The raid took place on the first day of the Russian school year, when many parents accompany their children to class.
Belsan is in the republic of North Ossetia, which borders wartorn Chechnya. The identity or origin of the kidnappers were not known, and they were not known to have made any demands.
But Chechen rebels have kidnapped in the past. In 2002, terrorists seized hundreds of hostages in a Moscow theatre, wrapping many of the women in explosives. The siege only ended when the Russian security forces used gas to quell the rebels.
In 1995, Chechen rebels led by warlord Shamil Basayev seized a hospital in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk, taking some 2,000 people hostage. The six-day standoff ended with a fierce Russian police assault. Some 100 people died in the incident.
Today's seizure came amid increased terrorism fears in Russia after a suicide bomber last night killed 10 people and injured more than 50 outside a Moscow subway station. Last week terrorists were blamed after two Russian airliners crashed, killing a total of 90 people.
On Sunday there were presidential elections in Chechnya, a Kremlin-based move aimed at undermining support for the insurgents by establishing a degree of civil order in the republic.
Fears that the Chechen rebels aimed to export their fight outside the small republic's borders rose in June after insurgents launched a coordinated series of attacks on police facilities in neighboring Ingushetia, in which more than 90 people were killed.
In a videotape released several days after the attack, a man appearing to be Basayev claimed responsibility for the assaults and said his fighters had seized huge quantities of arms from police arsenals.
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