Los Angeles Times
8:40 AM PDT, September 4, 2004
BESLAN, Russia —
President Vladimir Putin today promised a tough response to what he called an
"all-out war" by terrorists against Russia, as the body count from the school
hostage-taking rose to more than 340 dead and some relatives still searched for
their loved ones amid the confusion.
A grim-faced Putin addressed the
nation on television after a pre-dawn visit to the scene of the hostage-taking
in Beslan. In a suprise admission of weakness, he said Russia's past response
to terrorism had been insufficient and said he would carry out wide reforms to
strengthen the security forces.
"We showed weakness, and weak people
are beaten," the former KGB spy said.
In Beslan, authorities were
counting the dead, and relatives of hostages frantically searched through lists
of the names of survivors, a day after security forces stormed the school where
militants had been holding more than 1,000 hostages -- mostly women and children
-- for nearly three days.
Regional Emergency Situations Minister Boris
Dzgoyev said 323 people, including 156 children, were killed in Friday's
violence. Russian Deputy Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said that all 26
hostage-takers were also killed.
Medical officials said more than 542
people including 336 children were hospitalized after the eruption of violence
that ended the 62-hour hostage drama on Friday.
Commandos stormed the
school after the militants set off explosions and began shooting at hostages who
fled. The result was 10 hours of chaos. Crying children, some naked and
covered with blood, fled the scene or were carried out amid explosions and
gunfire. Security forces chased militants who split into groups and took refuge
in a home and a basement. During the initial explosions, part of the school
roof collapsed, causing many deaths.
Putin flew to Beslan, in the
southern republic of North Ossetia, before dawn today, as smoke was still rising
from the shattered school. He ordered the borders of North Ossetia sealed while
security forces search for the militants' accomplices.
He visited
several hospitalized victims, stopping to stroke the head of one injured child
and the arm of the school principal.
"Even alongside the most cruel
attacks of the past, this terrorist act occupies a special place because it was
aimed at children," he said during a meeting with regional officials, which was
broadcast on Russian television.
He stressed that security officials
had not planned to storm the school -- trying to fend off any potential
criticism that the government side had provoked the bloodshed. Some North
Ossetians complained, however, that his visit was too little, too late.
"Why didn't he come earlier? .... Why did he come in the middle of the night?"
said Irina Volgokova, 33, whose close friend and the friend's daughter were
missing.
"He is the head of our country. He should answer for this
before the people."
Later, Putin made a speech on national television
saying Russia must mobilize to face the threat of terrorism, telling Russians
they could not continue living in a "carefree" way.
Since the collapse
of the Soviet Union, the nation was weakened and unable to respond effectively
to terrorism, Putin said.
He blamed police corruption and porous
borders for the failure to stop attacks. "In any case, we couldn't adequately
react ... We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten," he said.
He
said measures would be taken to strengthen Russia's unity, create a more
effective crisis management system, establish a new system to control the
situation in the Caucasus, and overhaul the law enforcement organs.
The
school attack followed a suicide bomb attack outside a Moscow subway station
Tuesday that killed eight people, and last week's near-simultaneous crash of two
Russian jetliners last week after what officials believe were explosions on
board.
The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted an unnamed, high-ranking
intelligence official in southern Russia as saying that the school seizure and
other major terrorist attacks in Russia had been financed by Abu Omar As-Seyf,
an Arab who allegedly represents al-Qaida in Chechnya.
The official
said the school raid was masterminded by Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev and
led by field commander Magomed Yevloyev, who was believed to be the leader of
the strict Wahhabi sect of Muslims in Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya.
Nine or ten of the slain hostage-takers were Arabs, Russian officials said.
An Arab presence could boost claims of involvement by international militant
groups.
Dozens of people crowded around lists of survivors posted at
the Beslan hospital today, searching desperately for news of loved ones who were
not yet accounted for. A man showed hospital nurses a photograph -- a young boy
dressed in a suit, like he was going to a birthday party or holiday
celebration.
"We run here, we run there, like we're out of our minds,
trying to find out anything we can about them," said Tsiada Biazrova, 47, whose
neighbors' children had yet to be found.
For some, grief had turned to
anger.
"Fathers will bury their children, and after 40 days (the
Orthodox Christian mourning period) ... they will take up weapons and seek
revenge," said Alan Kargiyev, a 20-year-old university student in the regional
capital Vladikavkaz.
Russian authorities said the bloody end to the
standoff came after explosions apparently set off by the militants -- possibly
by accident -- as emergency workers were entering the school to collect the
bodies of slain hostages.
As hostages took their chance to flee, the
militants opened fire on them, and security forces -- along with town residents
who had brought their own weapons -- opened covering fire to help the hostages
escape. Commandos stormed into the building and secured it, then chased fleeing
militants in the town, with shooting lasting for 10 hours.
Fridinsky,
the prosecutor, said the hostage-takers had numbered 26 and all had been killed.
The bodies of at least six militants lay outside the school today, surrounded by
black metal and plastic weapons parts and bullets. A forensic investigator
studied the bodies.
An explosives expert told NTV television that the
militants, themselves strapped with explosives, hung bombs from basketball hoops
in the gym and set other explosive devices in the building.
The
region's governor, Alexander Dzasokhov, said Friday that the militants had
demanded that Russian troops leave Chechnya -- the first solid indication that
the attack was connected to the rebellion.
The Federal Security Service
chief in North Ossetia, Valery Andreyev, said today that investigators were
looking into whether militants had smuggled the explosives and weapons into the
school and hidden them during a renovation this summer.
Alla Gadieyeva,
a 24-year-old hostage who was seized with her son and mother -- all three were
among the survivors -- said the captors laughed when she asked them for water
for her mother.
"When children began to faint, they laughed," Gadieyeva
said. "They were totally indifferent."
Two major hostage-taking raids
by Chechen rebels outside the war-torn region in the past decade provoked
Russian rescue operations that led to many deaths. The seizure of a Moscow
theater in 2002 ended after a knockout gas was pumped into the building,
debilitating the captors but causing almost all of the 129 hostage deaths.
In 1995, rebels led by guerrilla commander Basayev seized a hospital in the
southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk, taking some 2,000 people hostage. The
six-day standoff ended with a fierce Russian assault, and some 100 people
died.