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| Saturday, 04 September 2004 |
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A hundred die in Russian school siege shootout
BESLAN, Russia, Friday (Reuters) - A hundred or more people were killed when Russian troops stormed a school on Friday in a chaotic battle to free parents, teachers and children who had been held hostage for 53 hours by Chechen separatists. Naked children ran for safety, screaming amid machinegun fire and explosions while attack helicopters clattered overhead. Julian Manyon, a reporter for Britain's ITV television news, said his cameraman had seen into the gutted gymnasium of the school in Beslan, in the North Ossetia region adjoining Chechnya, after the hostage-takers left. "Our cameraman ... told me that in his estimation there are as many as 100 dead bodies, I am afraid, lying on the smouldering floor of the gymnasium where we know that a large number of the hostages were being held," he said. The Russian Interfax news agency reported a similar number. Tass news agency said there were more than 400 wounded, and agencies said at least seven people had been dead on arrival at hospital. Rebels fled with soldiers in pursuit. The authorities said events forced their hand after insisting from the outset they would not resort to violence. Manyon said police had told him some children had tried to escape, and that when the captors fired and chased them, the troops opened fire and the battle began. Moments earlier, authorities said they had sent a vehicle to fetch the bodies of people killed in Wednesday's seizure of the school. "No military action was planned. We were planning further talks," the regional head of the FSB security service, Valery Andreyev, told RTR television. In the ensuing chaos, children ran from the building or were carried by soldiers. Stripped to their underwear after two days without food or drink in a stiflingly hot and crowded school, they gulped bottles of water and waited in a daze for relatives as gunfire crackled around them. "I smashed the window to get out," one boy with a bandaged hand told Russian television. "People were running in all directions ... They (the rebels) were shooting from the roof." The outcome of the siege may have repercussions for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who came to power in 2000 on a promise to restore order in Chechnya after years of violent rebellion and hostage-takings similar to the one in Beslan. Meanwhile, at the time of this edition going to press, Reuters said a very loud explosion was heard in the area of the southern Russian school where hundreds of hostages had been held. A Reuters reporter on the scene said: "It's biggest explosion near the school I've heard. People say it's tanks, some say it's mines being blown up." Meanwhile, most of the children taken hostage in a southern Russian school are alive, Interfax news agency quoted a security official as saying on Friday. "Those children who remained in the school, in general, did not suffer. The ones who suffered were the children in the group which ran from the school and on whom the fighters opened fire," the official was quoted as saying. NTV television reported that five of the armed gang which seized the school on Wednesday had been killed. |
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