Russian children hostage
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Russian children hostage
| Wed, 09-01-2004 - 1:55pm |
I have looked at many different boards, on many different sites on this and I am disturbed by the fact most people seem to be embracing hate. On one site people were advocating extermination of all musilims(sp?). Is any one else disturbed by this?
I think we can all agree that we want the children and other to come out of that school safely. Why don't we each spend a few minutes in prayer to our respective God or gods for the safety of these people and the sanity of our race. I find it so hard to understand anyone advocating the complete extermination of a religion, or group of people. We may not be able to change some of those attitudes, but we can sure as hell try. Compassion is indiginous to all isn't it?
I think we can all agree that we want the children and other to come out of that school safely. Why don't we each spend a few minutes in prayer to our respective God or gods for the safety of these people and the sanity of our race. I find it so hard to understand anyone advocating the complete extermination of a religion, or group of people. We may not be able to change some of those attitudes, but we can sure as hell try. Compassion is indiginous to all isn't it?

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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=Russia%20School%20Seizure
Thursday, September 2, 2004 · Last updated 7:26 a.m. PT
Militants release 31 hostages in Russia
By MIKE ECKEL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
BESLAN, Russia -- Camouflaged security agents carried babies to safety after militants holding hundreds of hostages at a school released at least 31 women and children Thursday, and officials expressed hope that negotiations would bring more progress in the standoff in southern Russia.
But a crowd of hostages' relatives keeping vigil outside the school was shaken when a pair of explosions went off just ahead of the release. Officials said militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at two cars that got too close to the school.
The developments came after a night of telephone negotiations between Russian authorities and the militants, who stormed the school Wednesday, rounding up around 350 children and adults into a gym and threatening to blow up the building if police launch an assault.
Local official Lev Dzugayev called the release "the first success" and expressed hope for further progress in negotiations. He has said between 15 and 24 militants were thought to be in the school, which has been surrounded and cordoned off by security forces.
In his first public comment on the standoff, President Vladimir Putin pledged to do everything possible to save the hostages' lives. "We understand these acts are not only against private citizens of Russia but against Russia as a whole," he said. "What is happening in North Ossetia is horrible."
The rescue operation's headquarters reported that 26 women and children were released in one group, and that another group included three women and two children.
Camouflage-clad security agents carried babies and young children - some wrapped in blankets, some naked - from the scene and into cars. An Associated Press Television News reporter saw soldiers escorting two women and at least two children away from the school.
Officials at the crisis headquarters said the releases came after mediation by Ruslan Aushev, an Afghan war veteran and former president of the neighboring Ingushetia region who is a respected figure in Russia's troubled North Caucasus region.
As Dzugayev announced some of the releases, a crowd of relatives swarmed around him, trying to find out if their loved ones were among those freed.
The hostage-taking in Beslan, a town of about 30,000 in the southern region of North Ossetia, appeared to be the latest in a string of attacks by insurgents from the nearby war-town republic of Chechnya. Suspicion has fallen on Chechen rebels, although no claim of responsibility has been made.
Valery Andreyev, the Federal Security Service's chief in North Ossetia, seemed to rule out the immediate use of force against the hostage-takers.
"There is no alternative to dialogue," the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted him as saying. "One should expect long and tense negotiations."
Sporadic gunfire chattered in the area through the night, keeping the crowds of relatives around the school on edge. On Thursday - 30 hours into the crisis - two large explosions about 10 minutes apart rocked the area, raising a cloud of black smoke.
Anxious relatives rushed to police barricades, trying to see what happened. The crisis headquarters said militants in the school fired RPGs at two cars. Officials said neither car was hit, but reporters said they saw a gutted car that apparently had been hit, about 100 yards from the school.
The drama at the school came with memories still sharp from the deadly end to last major hostage-taking blamed on Chechens. In 2002, Chechen militants seized a Moscow theater, holding hundreds inside. That standoff ended when police pumped an unidentified knockout gas into the building - but the gas was responsible for almost all of the 129 hostage deaths.
Gennady Gudkov, a retired Federal Security Service colonel, said there is little chance that authorities will resort to a knockout gas this time - particularly since medical experts said it tended to have a stronger effect on children.
The militants' storming of the school came a day after a suspected Chechen suicide bomber blew herself up outside a Moscow subway station, killing nine people, and just over a week after 90 people died in two plane crashes that are suspected to have been blown up by bombers also linked to Chechnya.
The recent bloodshed is 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.
Heavily armed militants wearing masks descended on Middle School No. 1 shortly after 9 a.m. on the opening day of the new school year Wednesday. About a dozen people managed to escape by hiding in a boiler room, but hundreds of others were herded into the school gymnasium and some were placed at windows as human shields.
Little was known about food and sanitary condition inside the school; offers to deliver food and water to the school were turned down.
Militants have placed a sniper on an upper floor of the three-story building. From inside the school, the militants sent out a list of demands and threatened that if police intervened, they would kill 50 children for every hostage-taker killed and 20 children for every hostage-taker injured, Kazbek Dzantiyev, head of the North Ossetia region's Interior Ministry, was quoted as telling the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Andreyev said some of the militants had been identified, and investigators were attempting to find their relatives and bring them to the school to help in the negotiations.
Casualty reports in the raid varied widely, but an official in the joint-command operation for the crisis said on condition of anonymity early Thursday that 16 people were killed - 12 inside the school, two who died in hospital and two others whose bodies still lay outside the school and could not be removed because of gunfire. Thirteen others were wounded.
However, Dzugayev said that seven were killed. He also gave the number of hostages at 354, before Thursday's releases. The children were mostly under 14.
A representative of Aslan Mashkhadov, a separatist leader who was Chechnya's president during three years of de-facto independence that ended in 1999, denied Chechen involvement in a statement published on a separatist Web site.
"police pumped an unidentified knockout gas into the building - but the gas was responsible for almost all of the 129 hostage deaths."
I've been
"129 deaths"
Those are the deaths a few months ago, in the Moscow theatre. The Russian police use gas to subdue the terrorists but in doing so
I hope and pray that there will be the best possible outcome out of this!!!
katlc
Blessings,
Linda
I am not really sure that it's even muslims that are doing this. I have been watching the news a little bit, and from what I understand, this is being done by opposing Russians, making demands of the Russian government. But I am not really sure, correct me if I am wrong.
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