Armed men seize school in southern Russia

Post by **Vympel** » 2004-09-01 03:48am

Fucking ...

May be as many as 400 hostages.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-09-01 03:51am

Fucking hell. School children.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2004-09-01 03:51am

If 400 Russian schoolchildren die, Russia is gonna nuke something.

I think.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-09-01 03:58am

CaptainChewbacca wrote:If 400 Russian schoolchildren die, Russia is gonna nuke something.

I think.

Nuking something would be excessive - but if 400 Russian kids die I'd put good money on Russia going insane with anger, and hunt down those responsible with utter ruthlessness.

BlkbrryTheGreat · Post by **BlkbrryTheGreat** » 2004-09-01 03:59am

They're probably going to break out the Phentenol to put the terrorists to sleep- as they did in their last major hostage crisis (theater in Moscow)- at least they will if its doable. If not, they'll probably just send in a team to blow the fuckers away, casualities be damned. If the terrorists execute all the children before a rescue attempt can be mounted.... well then Russia will probably do something drastic, Putin can't afford to appear like a weak pussy, espically not with the situation in Georgia.

Lord Poe · Post by **Lord Poe** » 2004-09-01 05:23am

WTF is going on in Russia? I hope it isn't related to those two planes that went down. If terrorists didn't get the message not to fuck with the U.S., they'll definitely be sorry they're screwing with Russia.

Zed Snardbody · Post by **Zed Snardbody** » 2004-09-01 05:46am

Would the Russians even be able to use the gass that they used last time?

With the hostages being young children couldn't the dossage neccesary to bring down the adults kill them? IIRC more than a few died in the moscow seige because of that.

Oberleutnant · Post by **Oberleutnant** » 2004-09-01 06:06am

Fucking bastards

Great way to win sympathy for your cause: take school chldren and their parents as hostages.

50 children have managed to escape

Post by **Colonel Olrik** » 2004-09-01 06:16am

Lord Poe wrote:WTF is going on in Russia? I hope it isn't related to those two planes that went down. If terrorists didn't get the message not to fuck with the U.S., they'll definitely be sorry they're screwing with Russia.

It's pretty much confirmed that both planes were downed by terrorists.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3607886.stm

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-09-01 06:17am

Zed Snardbody wrote:Would the Russians even be able to use the gass that they used last time?

With the hostages being young children couldn't the dossage neccesary to bring down the adults kill them? IIRC more than a few died in the moscow seige because of that.

Yes, from the news I heard that 120 of the hostages were killed, while 40 terrorists were killed. At least that's how I remember it.

I could be wrong.

Oberlieutenant wrote:Great way to win sympathy for your cause: take school chldren and their parents as hostages.

Terrorists don't have the goal of winning sympathy - you're thinking of guerrillas. Terrorist's only goal is to sow terror in order to promote a political cause or message.

Post by **Edi** » 2004-09-01 06:40am

Lord Poe wrote:WTF is going on in Russia? I hope it isn't related to those two planes that went down. If terrorists didn't get the message not to fuck with the U.S., they'll definitely be sorry they're screwing with Russia.

Like I said to Shep in another thread, Chechen terrorism in Russia is nothing new and has been steadily escalating since 1999 when Russia invaded them a second time. Simply put, the Russian atrocities against Chechen civilians are drawing this retaliation as more and more of them are becoming desperate enough or angry enough not to give a fuck who they kill in the process of getting revenge. Chechnya is Russia's Palestine in this respect, and they are not going to be rid of this before they leave the Chechens alone and bugger off from there.

A harsh crackdown on Chechnya right now, as is likely to happen after the plane strikes, the Moscow bombing and the hostage crisis is just going to mean that it will ultimately be Russian civilians who will be the most sorry some time down the line.

I don't approve of this hostage taking by any means, but I'm not surprised at all. Nor will I be surprised if it ends in a bloodbath. As to whose direct actions will kill more hostages, it's even odds on whether it's going to be the terrorists or Russian troops.

Edi

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-09-01 06:56am

I imagine the Russians will bomb Chechnya back into the stone age over this. The problem is Grozny has already been bombed back into the stone age. Though I suppose the Russians can turn the big chunks of debris into little chunks of debris.

aerius · Post by **aerius** » 2004-09-01 11:37am

Saw on Canadian TV that the hostage takers are suicide bombers and have bombs strapped on them.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-09-01 11:53am

The CNN article on the situation:

Hundreds Held Hostage in Russia School
By JIM HEINTZ

MOSCOW (AP) - Attackers wearing suicide-bomb belts seized a Russian school in a region bordering Chechnya on Wednesday, taking hostage about 400 people - half of them children - and threatening to blow up the building. At least two people were killed, one of them a parent who resisted an attacker.

The attack was the latest violence blamed on secessionist Chechen rebels, coming a day after a suicide bomber killed 10 people in the capital and a week after near-simultaneous explosions caused two Russian planes to crash, killing all 90 people on board.

President Vladimir Putin interrupted his working holiday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi and returned to Moscow. On arrival at the airport, he held an immediate meeting with the heads of Russia's Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service, the Interfax news agency said.

The school seizure began after a ceremony marking the first day of the Russian school year, when it was likely that many parents had accompanied their children to the facility which covers grades 1-11. The attackers forced children to stand at the windows and warned they would blow up the school if police tried to storm it, said Alexei Polyansky, a police spokesman for southern Russia.

The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that hostage-takers released 15 children, but Ruslan Ayamov, spokesman for North Ossetia's Interior Ministry told The Associated Press that 12 children and one adult managed to escape after hiding in the building's boiler room. He denied that any hostages were released.

Gunfire broke out after the raid and at least two people were killed, including a father who had brought his child to the school and was shot trying to resist the attackers, said Fatima Khabolova, a spokeswoman for the regional parliament. She said most of the attackers were wearing suicide belts.

An attacker also was killed, and nine people were injured, including three teachers and two police officers, Polyansky said. More gunfire and several explosions were heard about three hours later, the Interfax news agency reported.

Suspicion in both the school attack and the Moscow bombing fell on Chechen rebels or their sympathizers, but there was no evidence of any direct link. ``In essence, war has been declared on us, where the enemy is unseen and there is no front,'' Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said.

The latest violence also appears to be timed around last Sunday's presidential elections in Chechnya, a Kremlin-backed move aimed at undermining support for the insurgents by establishing a modicum of civil order in the war-shattered republic. The previous Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed along with more than 20 others in a bombing on May 9.

The school attackers demanded talks with regional officials and a well-known pediatrician, Leonid Roshal, who aided hostages during the deadly seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002, news reports said.

The hostage-takers also demanded the release of fighters detained over a series of attacks on police facilities in neighboring Ingushetia in June, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported, citing regional officials. Those well-coordinated raids killed more than 90 people.

Regional emergency officials said about 400 people including some 200 children were being held captive, ITAR-Tass reported. A regional police official said the hostages had been herded into the school gymnasium.

There were 17 attackers, both male and female, Interfax said, citing Ismel Shaov, a regional spokesman for the Federal Security Service.

In television footage from outside the school in Beslan, a town about 10 miles north of the regional capital of Vladikavkaz, men in camouflage with heavy-caliber machine guns took up positions on the perimeter and other men in civilian dress with light automatic rifles paced nervously.

At one point, a girl in a floral print dress and a red bow in her hair ran around a corner apparently after fleeing from the school, her hand held by a flak-jacketed soldier, followed by an older woman. Russian news reports said about 50 students managed to escape, some after hiding in the school's boiler room during the raid.

``I was standing near the gates, music was playing when I saw three armed people running with guns, at first I though it was a joke, when they fired in the air and we fled,'' a teenage witness, Zarubek Tsumartov, said on Russian television.

The attack was the latest in a string of violence that has tormented Russians and plagued the government of Putin, who came to power in 2000 vowing to crush the Chechen rebels.

Terrorism fears in Russia have risen markedly following the plane crashes and the suicide bombing outside a Moscow subway station Tuesday night. The blast by a female attacker tore through a busy area between the station and a department store, killing 10 people and wounded more than 50.

A militant Muslim web site published a statement claiming responsibility for the bombing on behalf of the ``Islambouli Brigades,'' a group that also claimed responsibility for the airliner crashes. The statements could not immediately be verified.

The statement said Tuesday's bombing was a blow against Putin, ``who slaughtered Muslims time and again.'' Putin has refused to negotiate with rebels in predominantly Muslim Chechnya who have fought Russian forces for most of the past decade, saying they must be wiped out.

Several female suicide bombers allegedly connected with the rebels have caused carnage in Moscow and other Russian cities in a series of attacks in recent years.

Many of the women bombers are believed to be so-called ``black widows,'' who have lost husbands or male relatives in the fighting that has gripped Chechnya for most of the past decade. Investigators of the plane crashes are seeking information about two Chechen women believed to have been aboard - one on each plane.

09/01/04 08:27

See last paragraph. This is the great danger of fighting a war in which your principal strategy is to go "eye for an eye" with atrocities. What if the enemy grows so desperate that they don't give a fuck?

Dartzap · Post by **Dartzap** » 2004-09-01 12:40pm

The Russian army is taking no chances at the moment, i just saw on the beeb, they arnt even useing live rounds in case of hiting the kids

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2004-09-01 12:42pm

Darth Wong wrote: See last paragraph. This is the great danger of fighting a war in which your principal strategy is to go "eye for an eye" with atrocities. What if the enemy grows so desperate that they don't give a fuck?

Then clearly you have failed in your objective of killing them all; break out the thickened Soman. Anyway, given the Russian record (though to be fair no one else has faced situations like this) on large hostage situations, espically in that area, this is probably going to end with a triple digit body count and the Russians opening up with multiple rocket launchers and attack helicopters. They did that before.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-09-01 01:23pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:See last paragraph. This is the great danger of fighting a war in which your principal strategy is to go "eye for an eye" with atrocities. What if the enemy grows so desperate that they don't give a fuck?
Then clearly you have failed in your objective of killing them all; break out the thickened Soman. Anyway, given the Russian record (though to be fair no one else has faced situations like this) on large hostage situations, espically in that area, this is probably going to end with a triple digit body count and the Russians opening up with multiple rocket launchers and attack helicopters. They did that before.

True, but it wasn't mostly children before.

So where are the "hot damn, those Russkies really know how to handle them terrorists!" people? Was this kind of heinous escalation not inevitable?

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2004-09-01 01:26pm

Darth Wong wrote: True, but it wasn't mostly children before.

It has been hospital patients several times before, many of whom were children and most of who died.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-09-01 01:29pm

Darth Wong wrote: So where are the "hot damn, those Russkies really know how to handle them terrorists!" people? Was this kind of heinous escalation not inevitable?

I'm sure they're busy drawing up maneuver 13B for this slap in the face of their claims that Russia had everything well in hand and were the model of how to handle terrorists. And to those saying Russia will bomb and blow up Checneya in response, what happens when there's nothing left to blow up? And the attacks keep on coming because you've created a whole group of people that have nothing left to lose.

Kazuaki Shimazaki · Post by **Kazuaki Shimazaki** » 2004-09-01 01:38pm

Stravo wrote:I'm sure they're busy drawing up maneuver 13B for this slap in the face of their claims that Russia had everything well in hand and were the model of how to handle terrorists. And to those saying Russia will bomb and blow up Checneya in response, what happens when there's nothing left to blow up? And the attacks keep on coming because you've created a whole group of people that have nothing left to lose.

Well, there's always genocide, I guess.

Everybody appreciated the decisiveness with which Russia did it that last time with the gas.

If they were weak and conceded anything the last time, I'm sure this group would be screaming as hard about how they are giving in to the terrorists - if the recent nations who looked like they gave up to the Iraqi terrorists were any indication.

What would be incidentally, your solution for dealing with the Chechen problem - a realistic one from the Russian point of view if you please.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2004-09-01 01:46pm

Kazuaki Shimazaki wrote:Well, there's always genocide, I guess.

Everybody appreciated the decisiveness with which Russia did it that last time with the gas.

If they were weak and conceded anything the last time, I'm sure this group would be screaming as hard about how they are giving in to the terrorists - if the recent nations who looked like they gave up to the Iraqi terrorists were any indication.

I'm not talking about the opera house. I'm talking about their "relaxed rules of engagement" when re-taking Chechnya and other assorted misdeeds. It's one thing to be hard on terrorists themselves, but when you go hard on their people in retaliation for what they've done (as many suggest we do to Muslims now), all you get is escalation, unless you go Final Solution on them in which case there's nobody left to retaliate (and congratulations, you're a comic-book arch-villain).

What would be incidentally, your solution for dealing with the Chechen problem - a realistic one from the Russian point of view if you please.

Devote time, money, and resources to helping the Chechen people, perhaps. Not committing atrocities in the first place would have been a good idea, but it's too late for that.

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-09-01 01:50pm

Kazuaki Shimazaki wrote:What would be incidentally, your solution for dealing with the Chechen problem - a realistic one from the Russian point of view if you please.

Firstly, dealing harshly with terrorists is never wrong but you also have to have a long term strategy, just blasting them everytime they do something wrong will get us nowhere. Look at the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, nothing left to bomb on the Palestinian side and they keep on coming.

You need to think about how to disengage from this. I'm the first to say that I am not well versed in the Chechneyan problem or even why they're figthing like this. I vaguely recall that Chechneya declared independence or some such and Russia wasn't having it.

So, what do you do?

You find out just what the hell these people want and try to find your way out of this mess because frankly unless you're willing to live with this happening every so often and losing civilian lives then your only other oiption is some sort of negotiation.

That doesn't work with all terrorists. Al-Qaeda for instance must be neutralized because what they want is unacceptable. Unfortunately we've now seemed to have forgotten about Al-Qaeda and moved on to nation building in Iraq.

I guess the long and short of it is this: For those groups that want something tangible and reasonable you can negotiate. IRA, PLO, They essentially want some sort of freedom or independence. You negotiate with them while also keeping a sword of Damacles at your disposal.

For groups like Al-Qaeda - extermination as best you can and hope for the best.

However it just seems that fruitless bombing and retaliation against civilians just breeds more terrorists and accomplishes only short term goals.

Terrorism cannot be dealt with as if you were knocking out a conventional enemy.

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2004-09-01 02:34pm

Emergency meeting of UNSC at 5 p.m. Eastern to address it, 8 dead so far including 1 terrorist.

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-09-01 03:23pm

CaptainChewbacca wrote:Emergency meeting of UNSC at 5 p.m. Eastern to address it, 8 dead so far including 1 terrorist.

Put the fear of Kofi Annan on the terrorists. that will solve the problem. I hate to be cynical, and i hope i'm wrong... but i think this can only end badly.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2004-09-01 03:36pm

I fear another theatre situation like last year, if not with gas, then a less subtle attack method. Casualties are inevitable it would seem.

The Chechens don't give a shit. Courtesy of the Religion of Peace™, these people will quite happily send young women into the open with SEMTEX "Martyr jackets" and let them take a few innocents down with them. Why should they care for the offspring of the enemy? They have no visible compassion.

Russia won't nuke shit. But they will escalate already high stakes in this neverending war of terror of their own. Welcome to the perpetual cycle of hell.