JEDDAH, 6 September 2004 — Crown Prince Abdullah yesterday telephoned Russian President Vladimir Putin to convey the Kingdom’s condolences on the deaths of 338 people during the hostage crisis in Beslan in the southern province of North Ossetia on Friday.
“The Saudi government and people condemn this terrorist act, which goes against religious teachings and violates human and moral values,” the Saudi Press Agency quoted the crown prince as telling the Russian president. “We wish Russia and its people peace, security and stability,” he added.
Putin expressed his country’s desire to strengthen security cooperation with Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism and promote bilateral ties.
Beslan yesterday began the grim task of burying its dead. Alina Khubechova celebrated her 11th birthday the day before the guerrillas seized her school last week. Four days later her grief-stricken parents buried her, grasping a picture of the pretty brown-haired girl with white ribbons in her hair.
The president of North Ossetia, a southern province where the hostage drama unfolded, apologized for failing to avert it. “I fully understand my responsibility,” Alexander Dzasokhov told doctors and relatives of the wounded children in a hospital in the regional capital Vladikavkaz not far from Beslan.
“I want to beg your pardon for failing to protect children, teachers and parents,” said the regional leader, who looked distressed with tears in his eyes.
In another sign of officials taking responsibility for the bloodbath, the regional Interior Minister Kazbek Dzantiyev offered his resignation. It was not accepted.
Official accounts say forces moved on the school gymnasium on Friday after the guerrillas holding 1,200 people hostage started firing on children fleeing in panic from two explosions. It was the bloodiest end to a hostage crisis in decades.
Half the dead were children. The rest were teachers, parents and relatives attending festivities on the first day of term.
North Ossetian spokesman Lev Dzugayev said 428 people remained in local hospitals and 260 were unaccounted for. A number of serious cases were taken to Moscow and other cities.
The carnage has thrown Putin’s policy in the turbulent Caucasus region into disarray and raised serious doubts about whether he can end Chechen separatism. The siege followed bombings aboard two airliners and near a Moscow metro station.
Ambulances that on Friday ferried the injured to hospital, spent yesterday standing by at the funerals to help relatives overcome with grief. Grieving relatives left front doors and windows open, according to local custom.
“Beslan is such a small town,” said Zoya, who attended Alina’s funeral. “What did we do to deserve all this?”
Others pressed on in search of missing relatives, forced to tour local hospitals in hope, and morgues in trepidation.
Rimma Butueva, a doctor, spent days looking for her cousin Rosa, missing along with her 9-year-old son. “We did not give up hope until the end,” she said. “But when we saw her body we understood we wouldn’t find her eldest son. The worst was recognizing him by his clothing.”
Questions have persisted about the storming of the school and how the gunmen managed to transport huge quantities of explosives and ammunition into the school.
Soslan Bidoyev, 23, was shocked by his brother’s account of events at the school when it was seized last Wednesday.
“He told us that when the hostages were brought in, the gunmen made the adults pry open the gymnasium floor. They took out supplies of weapons from underneath the floor,” he said.
Such accounts strengthened the view that the gunmen were well prepared and had local help, and fueled the anger of residents who accused Putin of making only a token visit to the town and failing in his duty to protect them.
Valery Andreyev, local head of the FSB security service, was quoted by Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy as saying the militants may have received help from local police, possibly because they were coerced.
— Additional input from agencies
