Explosion Heard at Site of School Under Seige in Russia Where Hundreds Hel

[hang a left]

Explosion Heard at Site of School Under Seige in Russia Where Hundreds Held Hostage
09-02-2004 2:16 PM

BESLAN, Russia -- At least one loud explosion was heard Friday near the site of the Russian school where militants were holding hundreds of captives for a second straight night.

A blast that sounded like a grenade fired from a launcher went off during a live report from the scene on Russia's NTV television. There was little reaction from bystanders to the sound, which came after a day of intermittent fire.



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http://sandiego.cox.net/cci/newsnational/national?_mode=view&_state=maximized&view=article&id=D84RORIG0

[candy]

1. This is a very frightening situation.

[MrMonk]

2. Read it and weep

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/03/international/europe/03school.html?hp

There are no children home at 13 Oktyabrskaya Street, except for the littlest ones, too young to go to school. All the others are hostages, held by militants in the school across the street.

<snip>

Inna and Natalya left home at 8:45 a.m. on Wednesday for the opening of the school year. Inna is starting 10th grade, Natalya the 4th. Mr. Arkov and his wife had treated them to everything new - new shoes, new dresses, new nylons.

The children crossed Oktyabrskaya Street, joined others who were carrying balloons to celebrate the day and entered the schoolyard for an outdoor assembly. Minutes later the hostage-takers appeared, wearing camouflage and black masks.

<snip>

Now strange details cling to memory. Ms. Arkova said she ran to the balcony as the shooting intensified and saw dozens of multicolored balloons rising through the schoolyard's trees. Their release, she said, must have marked the moment when the children panicked, all as one.

<snip>

Mr. Arkov was almost numb with disbelief. He said in addition to the 40 children, several parents from 13 Oktyabrskaya were among the captives, having gone to the assembly and been swept up in the attack. "There are two entire families missing," he said. "These are families of four or five people."

[HuckleB]

4. A very touching piece.

Thanks for sharing.

[HuckleB]

3. A terrible lesson from a classroom in Beslan

A terrible lesson from a classroom in Beslan

The west can no longer ignore the violence and killings in Chechnya
http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1296289,00.html

"Children make it different. Like the tragedies of Columbine and Dunblane, the terror that stalks the classrooms of besieged Middle School 1 in Beslan, North Ossetia, is uniquely disturbing.

Who in these torrid days of random, global violence has not become accustomed, even inured, to the suicide bombings in Iraq or a host of other troublespots? Yet who, anywhere in the world, is not touched, angered or frightened - or all three - by the thought of young kids traumatised by masked killers wearing bomb-belts?

When the victims are children, the sort of horror on show in Beslan, real or threatened, represents the adult world's ultimate betrayal of innocence, its final failure to nurture and protect. Here is a shared disgrace, borne of a universal grief. Here is an international crying shame, beseeching an urgent remedy.

The Chechen conflict, in which the Ossetian siege is inextricably bound up, has become internationalised in many other ways since it reignited, in its modern incarnation, in the early 1990s. Like Czechoslovakia in a different time, the Caucasian lands of Chechnya, North and South Ossetia, Ingushetia and Dagestan cannot be dismissed as distant countries of which we know little and care less. What happens there matters here.

..."


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Definitely worth the read. Very well done.