1,000 People May Be in Russian School
New Accounts Say at Least 1,000 People Being Held Hostage at Russian School
The Associated Press
abcnews.go.com
BESLAN, Russia Sept. 3, 2004 — Heavily armed militants who seized a school three days ago are holding at least 1,000 students, teachers and parents hostage inside the building, far more than previously thought, a released hostage and a regional official said.
Russian officials had said that about 350 people were being held by raiders who seized the school in the North Ossetian city of Beslan on Wednesday. But a teacher who was among at least 26 women and children released on Thursday disputed that, according to a report published Friday.
"On television they say that there are 350 of us. That's not right. There's not less than 1,500 in the school," the respected newspaper Izvestia quoted the woman as saying on condition of anonymity.
In addition, local legislator Azamat Kadykov told a meeting packed with worried relatives and friends Friday that the number of hostages was "more or less 1,000."
The reports could not immediately be confirmed, but the woman who spoke with Izvestia said that some 1,000 children were enrolled at the school, and the militants had captured teachers and many parents as well when they invaded the building Tuesday during a ceremony to celebrate the start of the new school year.
The statements were a new blow to the morale of hostage relatives, who spent the night whipsawed by hope and dread buoyed by the release of dozens of women and children but alarmed by grenades fired from the building.
Valery Andreyev, chief of the regional office of the Federal Security Service, meanwhile said that contacts with the hostage-takers had resumed in the morning, following an overnight suspension, but stopped again.
The release of at least 26 hostages on Thursday left some Beslan resident convulsed in joy, but many more wracked with disappointment. Men and women wept or hugged each other with relief as a man read the names of the freed hostages over a loudspeaker.
The released hostages included toddlers who were naked, apparently because of stifling heat in the school, where the hostage-takers have refused to allow authorities to deliver water, food and medicine for the captives. The refusal could indicate hostage-takers' suspicion of being poisoned.
Two explosions were heard from the cordoned-off school area during the night. Lev Dzugayev, an aide to the president of North Ossetia, where Beslan is located, said the raiders had fired two grenades, wounding a policeman, ITAR-Tass said.
Another explosion roared on Friday morning, as Kadykov and Leonid Rosahal, a pediatrician who has been involved in the negotiations, spoke to the crowd of worried residents.
President Vladimir Putin said everything possible would be done to end the "horrible" crisis and save the lives of the children and adults being held at School No. 1 in Beslan.
But it was uncertain how much either side was willing to give to avoid further bloodshed in the siege the latest incident in a series of violent attacks believed linked to Russia's war in Chechnya, which borders North Ossetia.
A dozen people were reported killed by the attackers when the school was captured Wednesday, but one official said Thursday that 16 died.
Reports after the standoff began Wednesday said the attackers demanded the release of people jailed after attacks on police posts in June that killed more than 90 people in Ingushetia, a region between North Ossetia and Chechnya. But officials said Thursday that the hostage-takers had not clearly formulated their demands.
Relatives, friends and neighbors who crowded outside barricades blocking access to the school gasped when the hostage release was announced by Dzugayev.
Dzugayev and other officials said 26 women and children of various ages were released, but Russian media reported that one woman went back to be with her still-captive children. An official at the crisis headquarters said another group of five hostages was let go separately.
Dzugayev called the releases "the first success" of negotiations and said they came after mediation including inside the school by Ruslan Aushev, a former president of neighboring Ingushetia, who is a respected figure in the northern Caucasus region.
The hostage release came after anxieties were sent soaring by two powerful explosions, followed by a plume of black smoke rising from the vicinity of the school Thursday afternoon. The crisis headquarters said militants fired grenades at two cars that apparently drove too close to the building. Officials said neither car was hit, but a gutted car was visible not far from the school.
On Thursday evening, a series of heavy thuds that sounded like artillery could be heard for several minutes, apparently coming from an area northwest of town. There was no information on what caused the sounds.
After midnight, two more grenade blasts roared. Dzugayev said that the hostage-takers told Russian authorities they fired because they saw suspicious movement and that officials told them there was no such movement.
Any hint of violence put people on edge. After seizing the school, the militants reportedly threatened to blow it up if troops tried to rescue the hostages and warned they would kill prisoners if any of their gang was hurt. Authorities estimated 15 to 24 militants held the school.
Two major hostage-taking raids by Chechen rebels outside the war-torn region in the past decade prompted forceful Russian rescue operations that led to many deaths. The most recent, the seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002, ended after a knockout gas was pumped into the building, debilitating the captors but causing almost all of the 129 hostage deaths.
Valery Andreyev, the Federal Security Service's chief in North Ossetia, seemed to rule out the use of force against the hostage-takers.
"There is no alternative to dialogue," he told the ITAR-Tass news agency. "One should expect long and tense negotiations."
The presence of large numbers of children added to the risks of any attempt to storm the school and fueled anger at the attackers.
"Send them off to a deserted island and shoot them," said Lydia Drachova, 66, sitting beneath a decrepit statue of Lenin. "They're taking children. Like beasts!"
After negotiations that ran through the night and into Thursday, Alan Doyev, a spokesman for the North Ossetia Interior Ministry, said that "so far we have not heard the terrorists' clearly formulated demands."
The militants' identity was also murky.
Dzugayev said the attackers might be from Chechnya or Ingushetia. Law enforcement sources in North Ossetia and Ingushetia, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attackers were believed to include Chechens, Ingush, Russians and a North Ossetian suspected of participating in the Ingushetia violence.
Russia was on edge following the nearly simultaneous bombings on two jetliners last week, a suicide bombing in Moscow on Tuesday and the school siege.
The upsurge in violence has been a blow to Putin, who pledged five years ago to crush Chechnya's rebels but instead has seen the insurgents increasingly strike civilian targets beyond the republic's borders.
"We understand these acts are not only against private citizens of Russia but against Russia as a whole," Putin said. "What is happening in North Ossetia is horrible ... not only because some hostages are children but because this action can explode the already fragile balance of interconfessional and interethnic relations in the region." |
