Sustained gunfire reported at School

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2004-09-03 01:38pm

MKSheppard wrote:
Col. Crackpot wrote: JESUS CHRIST!! The locals are hunting them down with deer rifles?!

Seer wrote:**EDIT** its now been reported that the ones who tried to flee across country (now numbered at 13) are holed up in a house, surrounded by local civilians who are shooting the place apart, brick by brick.

Confirmation awaited.

That's what I would do, if it was my town. Another terrorist was apparently beaten to death when he attempted to disguise himself amongst the local citizenry.

Bertie Wooster · Post by **Bertie Wooster** » 2004-09-03 01:42pm

I'm guessing Bush sent word to Putin that the US would not oppose any course of retaliation Russia might take.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2004-09-03 01:44pm

Bertie Wooster wrote:I'm guessing Bush sent word to Putin that the US would not oppose any course of retaliation Russia might take.

As well he should have. There's no excuse for targetting a school. A fucking HOSPITAL might've been a nominally better target, for God's sake. I hope that everyone remotely connected to this attack is dead within 48 hours.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-09-03 01:49pm

Master of Ossus wrote:
MKSheppard wrote:
Col. Crackpot wrote: JESUS CHRIST!! The locals are hunting them down with deer rifles?!

Seer wrote:**EDIT** its now been reported that the ones who tried to flee across country (now numbered at 13) are holed up in a house, surrounded by local civilians who are shooting the place apart, brick by brick.

Confirmation awaited.
That's what I would do, if it was my town. Another terrorist was apparently beaten to death when he attempted to disguise himself amongst the local citizenry.

Yes, and I hope he begged Allah to grant him merciful death before it was over.

The reaction of the locals makes me proud of the Motherland (although Osetians are not Russian). First, they offered themselves as hostages in exchange for the release of the women and children, they helped the authorities during the siege, and now they're administering just punishment to the terrorist scum. I may only hope that ethnic Russians would do the same in that situation.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2004-09-03 01:55pm

sig updated to reflect this atrocity.

Rogue 9 · Post by **Rogue 9** » 2004-09-03 01:57pm

MKSheppard wrote:sig updated to reflect this atrocity.

*Peers* It still looks the same...

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2004-09-03 01:58pm

Rogue 9 wrote: *Peers* It still looks the same...

I was fine tuning it. Check now.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-09-03 01:58pm

Russian troops stormed a school on Friday in a chaotic battle to free hundreds of parents, teachers and children who had been held hostage for two days by Chechen separatists.

Naked and screaming children ran for safety amid machinegun fire and explosions while attack helicopters clattered overhead. The Tass and Interfax news agencies spoke of over 300 wounded, mostly children. Rebels fled with soldiers in pursuit.

Witnesses at the scene in Beslan, in the North Ossetia region near Chechnya, saw several bodies on stretchers and Russian news agencies said at least seven people had been dead on arrival at hospital.

Half- or fully naked children gulped from bottles of water after two days without drink in a stiflingly hot and crowded school. Some lay on stretchers. There was no definite toll, although Tass quoted an unidentified official as saying most of the hostages were alive:

"Those children who remained in the school, in general, were not hurt. The ones who suffered were the children in the group which ran from the school and on whom the fighters opened fire."

It was unclear what had triggered the battle, shortly after Russia insisted it would not resort to force to free the hostages held for 53 hours without food or water. Tass said troops had blown a hole in a wall to let hostages escape. It also said soldiers were battling gunmen who had fled to a house in the south of the town.

A Reuters correspondent saw soldiers commandeering civilian cars, apparently to transport the wounded. NTV television said five hostage-takers had been killed. Officials had said some 500 people were being held in the school in North Ossetia, near Chechnya, but released hostages said the number could be nearer to 1,500 people lying on top of one another in increasingly desperate conditions.

Interfax said some of the hostage-takers, believed to number about 40, had tried to break out through crowds of frantic relatives waiting near the school as special forces moved in. The clashes appeared to have begun shortly after authorities said they had sent a vehicle to the school to fetch bodies. Various reports said this had been followed by a break-out attempt by either hostages or rebels.

Alexander Dzasokhov, president of the province of North Ossetia, said earlier the masked gunmen had demanded an independent Chechnya, the first clear link between them and the decade-long separatist rebellion in the neighbouring province.

One unidentified woman freed on Thursday told Izvestia that during the night children occasionally began to cry: "Then the fighters would fire in the air to restore quiet. In the morning they told us they would not give us anything more to drink because the authorities were not ready to negotiate.

"When children went to the toilet, some tried to drink from the tap. The fighters stopped them straight away."

The siege is the latest in a wave of violent attacks in Russia, all linked to Chechen separatists. Last week, suicide bombers were blamed for the near-simultaneous crash of two passenger planes in which 90 people died. This week, in central Moscow, a suicide bomber blew herself up, killing nine people.

Russian media have speculated that the gunmen could belong to separatist forces under Magomed Yevloyev, an Ingush who is believed to have led a mass assault on Ingushetia in June.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who came to power in 2000 vowing to "wipe out" Chechen militants, pledged to do all he could to save the hostages, but has rejected any compromise on Chechnya's status. Previous hostage crises have ended in huge loss of life.

A representative of Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov in London repeated denials of involvement by forces loyal to him, and condemned the hostage-takers, saying: "This is a monstrous act ... There is no way to justify what they have done," Akhmed Zakayev told Channel 4 news.

Izvestia said 860 pupils attended School No.1. But the number of people on the campus would have been swollen by parents and relatives attending the first-day ceremony traditional in Russian schools. Up to 16 people were believed to have been killed in the early stages of the assault.
03 СЕНТЯБРЯ 16:52

from Gazeta.ru

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-09-03 02:00pm

Shep: unichtozhit' is more appropriate that razrushit' in this case(sorry, no Russian fonts on the PC I'm on right now)

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2004-09-03 02:01pm

fgalkin wrote:Shep: unichtozhit' is more appropriate that razrushit' in this case(sorry, no Russian fonts on the PC I'm on right now)

That's what you get for using an online machine translator, than a native
Russian speaker.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-09-03 02:06pm

Yes.

Also, you can use Islam rather than musulmanstvo, if you want. Btw, unichtozhit' means "to destroy", razrushit' means "to demolish".

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-09-03 02:22pm

what does that say Shep?

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2004-09-03 02:46pm

I think it means "Muslims should be demolished." But he wants to say "Islam should be destroyed". I think. My verbs are rusty.

Post by **fgalkin** » 2004-09-03 05:22pm

Yes, that is correct. Btw, you didn't tell me you know Russian!

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

Zed Snardbody · Post by **Zed Snardbody** » 2004-09-03 06:29pm

Um, has anyone asked or wondered why the children are naked?

Korvan · Post by **Korvan** » 2004-09-03 06:34pm

Zed Snardbody wrote:Um, has anyone asked or wondered why the children are naked?

Temperatures in the gym got really hot. The kids stripped down to stay cool.

Zed Snardbody · Post by **Zed Snardbody** » 2004-09-03 06:41pm

Ah. Nice to know thats the reason.

Col. Crackpot · Post by **Col. Crackpot** » 2004-09-03 06:49pm

Zed Snardbody wrote:Ah. Nice to know thats the reason.

i was wondering that too. I was begining to think there was a far more disturbing reason....

Zed Snardbody · Post by **Zed Snardbody** » 2004-09-03 07:10pm

Yea. As if the situation wasn't horrific enough. That would be the last thing those poor kids needed to deal with.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2004-09-03 07:13pm

Darth Wong wrote:So if you're Putin, what do you do? Carpet-bomb Chechnya in retaliation? Blow up mosques? Outlaw Islam? Will that help prevent more of this kind of behaviour in the future?

One possibility is the wholesale depopulation of Chechnya. It would definitely not be the first time that the Russian government deported an entire population (Kaliningrad used to be Konigsberg, and does anyone here remembered the Volga Germans?).

Elheru Aran · Post by **Elheru Aran** » 2004-09-03 07:23pm

This picture did it for me.

Fuckers...

Korvan · Post by **Korvan** » 2004-09-03 07:30pm

The majority of Chechnya is already under Russian control. Even the Kremlin favorite won in the recently held elections. The problem is the rebels hiding out in the hills and mountains. They've been trying to wipe them out for some time now, but the terrain is definately in the rebels favour.

Even if they depopulated the civilian centres, you'd still have the rebels in the hills. And it's hard to kill 'em if you can't find 'em.

My guess is that Putin will step up operations in them thar hills and hope things work out better than they last time they fought a war in similar terrain.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2004-09-03 07:39pm

Korvan wrote:The majority of Chechnya is already under Russian control. Even the Kremlin favorite won in the recently held elections.

Yes. The "elections" which were supervised by Russian troops.

Even if they depopulated the civilian centres, you'd still have the rebels in the hills.

No, you wouldn't. The rebels would starve in the absence of people supplying them with food. Not even fundamentalist Islamic fervor can sustain your will to fight when you suffer from scurvy, rickets, and protein deficiency and your stomach starts to eat itself.

Iceberg · Post by **Iceberg** » 2004-09-03 07:41pm

Pablo Sanchez wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:So if you're Putin, what do you do? Carpet-bomb Chechnya in retaliation? Blow up mosques? Outlaw Islam? Will that help prevent more of this kind of behaviour in the future?
One possibility is the wholesale depopulation of Chechnya. It would definitely not be the first time that the Russian government deported an entire population (Kaliningrad used to be Konigsberg, and does anyone here remembered the Volga Germans?).

Most of the Volga Germans got the hell out of their own volition while the getting was good.

I should know. I'm a descendent of some of them.

frigidmagi · Post by **frigidmagi** » 2004-09-03 07:44pm

The rebels would starve in the absence of people supplying them with food. Not even fundamentalist Islamic fervor can sustain your will to fight when you suffer from scurvy, rickets, and protein deficiency and your stomach starts to eat itself.

You know, right now I think I could live with that happening to those guys.