God Bless the innocent Babies...

Seismic Anamoly · Joined: 22 Aug 2002 Posts: 3039

Quote:

Gunmen strapped with explosives around their waists have taken hundreds hostage, including around 200 children, at a school in southern Russia near war-torn Chechnya Wednesday.

At least two people were killed and one was in critical condition after 20 masked and heavily armed men and women dressed in black burst into the courtyard of a secondary school in the town of Beslan, in the fourth terror attack to rock Russia in a week.

The hostage takers herded the children and adults into a gym and demanded to meet with the head of the local region of North Ossetia and neighboring Ingushetia, Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported. They have threatened to blow up the building if security forces move in.

Russian television quoted law enforcement officials as saying that 200 pupils had been taken captive, along with 40 parents and teachers, on the first day of the new school year.

And God DAMN the @#%$ that have them hostage.

Cowards. Gutless, Ball-less Cowards.

Seismic Anamoly · Joined: 22 Aug 2002 Posts: 3039

Quote:

On a bright, festive opening day of school, the first sign of the brutality to come was a solitary balloon drifting skyward.

Diana Kubalova, 14, felt the first trickle of fear when the smaller children in the front row of the school parade let go of their party balloons out of shock.

"At this moment I saw people in masks," she said. "At first I thought it was all part of the celebrations and that these people were a special surprise. Then they began to fire shots in the air. The teachers and parents shouted 'run, run' and we did."

The promise and expectation of the first day of term evaporated in the North Ossetian town of Beslan in southern Russia. Seventeen gunmen, some wrapped in explosives, swept into Middle School 1, running into the school courtyard from the nearby railway station and sparking Russia's most serious domestic crisis since the Dubrovka theatre siege two years ago.

Diana fled. She hid in the boiler room with 14 others, a teacher and a parent who had been attending the ceremony.

"We managed to peek through the crack in the door," she said. "The gunmen were armed with machine guns and my teacher noticed one girl among them wearing a mask. Someone said they were speaking in Chechen."

Amid the disinfectant of newly scrubbed floors and the gleam of whitewashed walls, the attackers filed through the school corridors.

Moments later, Diana heard an Ossetian voice outside the room. "We whispered to him, 'help us get out'. He did, yet as we ran from the boiler room, the [militants] noticed us. Some of us were grabbed by them and were taken off to the sports hall. Now I am here, outside, and they are there."

Inside, scores of pupils aged from seven to 17 were herded into the school's sports hall along with parents and teachers. One official estimate put the total number held at 336. According to reports, mines were laid about them, and children posted at the windows to prevent sniper fire.

The suicide bombers eventually made their demands clear in incipient negotiations with the authorities: the release of 24 prisoners, fellow militants captured in a recent raid, talks with the presidents of North Ossetia and neighbouring Ingushetia and Russian withdrawal from Chechnya - a demand that no Russian president can meet.

The Kremlin called an emergency sitting of the UN security council in a bid to shore up international support for its inevitable backlash. President George Bush was one of the first to express condolences and solidarity in a message the Kremlin portrayed as support for Russia's own peculiar war on terror.

Earlier in the day, President Vladimir Putin pledged that he would never negotiate with terrorists or even Chechen separatists. But with the bloody end of the Dubrovka theatre siege - in which 129 people were fatally gassed during a Russian assault - still fresh in the popular consciousness, the Kremlin strongman needs to minimise casualties.

Outside the school the reason for a soft approach was clear. Relatives milled around, dumbstruck that a decade of conflict in the nearby republic of Chechnya had crossed the border to wreak such havoc with their families. Two corpses lay near the school building. A sniper on the roof kept doctors away from one girl, who lay wounded in the inner grounds of the building.

Mothers screamed at helpless policemen. One was shown on television saying: "How long can this madness in the country continue? When will it end?" Another wailed: "Exchange us for the children. What are our children guilty of?" Another said: "This was my child's first day at school. He was so happy and told me: 'Mum, I will be a good student'. Please, take me, take me, instead."

Seismic Anamoly · Joined: 22 Aug 2002 Posts: 3039

www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/eu...index.html

God Damn Terrorists and all who defend/sympathize with them.

RonOnGuitar · Joined: 08 Jan 2003 Posts: 1916

The Russians know how to handle this type of human garbage. When they've attacked before - as in the Moscow Theatre hostage incident - when they bury the terrorists, they wrap them in pigskin. According to Islamist belief (pork = unclean) that excludes them from joining "allah", getting the 72 virgins and all.

But how tragic it is that so many innocent people - especially the children, the epitome of innocence - were specifically targeted for murder. That is the face of pure evil.