- At least 120 people, including many children, were today
taken hostage in a school in southern Russia.
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- A group of heavily-armed men and women stormed the secondary
school, in the city of Beslan, during a morning ceremony being held to
mark the first day of the new school year.
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- Nine people died in the initial attack, according to
the Itar-Tass news agency. They included a father who had attempted to
resist the terrorists, and one of the attackers, who was shot dead by police.
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- Earlier reports had put the number of hostages at around
400, including 200 children, but the figure was later revised.
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- Officials cited by Russia's Interfax news agency said
the number of hostages was between 120 and 150, but the number of pupils
among them was not specified.
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- Ruslan Ayamov, spokesman for North Ossetia's interior
ministry, denied earlier reports that the hostage-takers had freed 15 of
children.
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- However, he said some students had managed to escape
by hiding in the school's boiler room when the terrorists stormed the site
and then fleeing.
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- The Russian news agency RIA reported that the attackers
had mined the school's gymnasium and threatened to blow it up if security
forces attempted to intervene. A regional police official told the Associated
Press that the hostages had been herded into the gym building.
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- Kazbek Dzantiyev, head of the regional interior ministry,
said that the hostages have threatened "for every destroyed fighter,
they will kill 50 children and for every injured fighter, 20 [children],"
ITAR-Tass reported.
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- Parents of the seized children have recorded a video
appeal urging the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to meet the terrorists'
demands. The text of the appeal was not immediately available.
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- Around 1,000 people, most of them parents, gathered outside
the site, demanding information and accusing the authorities of failing
to protect their children.
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- Mr Putin, who interrupted his holiday to return to Moscow
and address the latest in a wave of violence linked to separatist rebels
in Chechnya, sent his interior minister and the head of the FSB security
service to the scene.
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- In London, the prime minister, Tony Blair, said: "No
cause can justify such wicked acts of terrorism. My thoughts, and the thoughts
of the British people, are with you and the Russian people at this difficult
time."
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- Belsan is in the republic of North Ossetia, which borders
wartorn Chechnya. The identities or origin of the kidnappers were not known,
but their tactics and demands suggest they are Chechen separatist rebels.
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- Itar-Tass reported that the attackers had demanded the
release of fighters seized in the neighbouring province of Ingushetia during
a huge rebel raid on the region in June.
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- The agency said a local Muslim leader had entered the
school to meet the attackers, but had been turned away. They insisted they
would negotiate only with the presidents of North Ossetia and Ingushetia.
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- Chechen rebels have taken hostages in the past. In 2002,
terrorists held hundreds of people hostage in a Moscow theatre, wrapping
many of the women in explosives.
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- The siege ended when Russian security forces used an
opiate-based gas to disable the gunmen. However, it was later revealed
that more than 100 of the hostages had died as a result of inhaling the
gas.
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- In 1995, Chechen rebels led by warlord Shamil Basayev
seized a hospital in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk, taking around
2,000 people hostage. The six-day standoff ended with a fierce Russian
police assault, and around 100 people died in the incident.
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- Today's seizure came hours after a suicide bomber last
night killed 10 people and injured more than 50 outside a Moscow subway
station. Last week, terrorists were blamed after two Russian airliners
crashed, killing 90 people.
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- On Sunday, presidential elections were held in Chechnya
- a Kremlin-baked move aimed at undermining support for insurgents by establishing
a degree of civil order in the republic.
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- Fears that Chechen rebels aimed to take their fight outside
the republic's borders increased in June after insurgents launched a coordinated
series of attacks on police facilities in neighbouring Ingushetia, killing
more than 90 people.
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- In a video released several days after the attack, a
man appearing to be Basayev claimed responsibility for the assaults, saying
his fighters had seized huge quantities of arms from police arsenals.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,2763,1294774,00.html
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