MOSCOW, 2 September 2004 — A heavily armed gang seized up to 400 hostages at a Russian school near Chechnya yesterday and threatened to shoot dead 50 children for any one of their comrades killed, a senior local official said.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia yesterday condemned the abduction of innocent people in both Iraq and Russia and called for the immediate release of the Russian hostages in North Ossetia and the two French journalists held hostage in Iraq by extremist groups.
The Kingdom “stresses that Islamic teachings founded on justice, compassion and tolerance prohibit any action which leads to attacking and harming innocent people and exhorts the kidnappers in both cases to free their captives as quickly as possible,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Itar-Tass news agency said negotiations had begun with the gang of up to 17 men and women who stormed into the secondary school in North Ossetia province during a morning ceremony marking the first day of the new school year.
The assault in the town of Beslan bore the signs of a Chechen operation and was the latest in a recent spate of deadly attacks in Russia that have killed more than 100. But Chechen separatists said they had nothing to do with it.
Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov denied that his forces were behind the attack through his spokesman in London.
President Vladimir Putin, facing a major challenge to his security policies, broke off his seaside holiday and rushed to Moscow. But he made no public statements.
As darkness fell, there were no signs of an end to the siege of the two-story brick building, surrounded by hundreds of troops. Armored vehicles stood nearby.
There were no details on the negotiations, but Tass said the attackers had rejected offers to deliver food and water for the hostages. Most of those held were pupils aged seven to 17.
The attackers had earlier threatened to kill children if their lives were at risk. “They have said that for every fighter wiped out they will kill 50 children and for every fighter wounded — 20,” regional Interior Minister Kazbek Dzantiyev told reporters in Beslan.
North Ossetia lies to the west of the seething Chechnya region where Russian forces have been trying to subdue separatists for a decade.
Putin, whose tactics over separatists helped propel him to power in 2000, has said nothing in public about either the school attack or a bomb explosion at a Moscow underground station on Tuesday evening which killed at least nine people.
Chechens said the Kremlin’s policy of resorting to force to tackle separatism was ultimately to blame. The gang, some strapped with explosives and reported to have mined the school grounds, set free 15 children soon after launching the assault, Itar-Tass news agency said. Nearly 50 children escaped in the initial confusion.
At least eight civilians were killed — seven dying of wounds in hospital, news agencies quoted officials as saying. Witnesses said sporadic gunfire resounded throughout the day. There was at least one loud bang from inside the school.
“Every gunshot I hear is like a shot into my heart,” said one woman, Vera, tears pouring down her cheeks. Her child was among the hostages. The exact number of hostages remained unclear, but local police eventually put the number at between 300 and 400. Tass said 132 children were among them.
“Three people ran into the courtyard,” one boy told NTV television. “At first I thought it was a joke. Then they began to shoot and we started running.”
In a surprise move, Russia called for a UN Security Council meeting on “terrorist acts” in the country. Moscow has for years rejected any outside role and criticism of its own role in Chechnya, insisting it was a domestic affair.
But Russian officials have recently been pointing more to foreign involvement in the attacks, possibly linked to Al-Qaeda.
The school attackers demand a meeting with top regional officials to discuss demands for the release of fighters seized in neighboring Ingushetia in June during a rebel raid there.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday strongly condemned the armed group action.
North Ossetia’s Interior Minister, Kazbek Dzantiev, said: “The number of hostages is probably somewhere between 300 and 400.”
Authorities had cordoned off the area around the school, where several tanks and armored personnel carriers and dozens of troops and police had taken up positions.
A crowd of angry parents gathered outside the cordoned off area, many of them armed and angry that authorities were not doing enough to free their children. “Take more pictures and send them to Putin with greetings from North Ossetia,” one man sarcastically said to photographers taking pictures.
