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Militants release 31 Russian hostages as negotiations continue
AMID sporadic rattle of gunfire, the armed militants who stormed a Russian school on Wednesday and took 400 people hostage have released 31 of the victims.
According to the rescue operation's headquarters, 26 women and children were released in a group while three women and two children were let go in another group.
On Wednesday, the well armed militants numbering 17 stormed a secondary school in Belsan, North Ossetia, taking 400 people hostage, half of them children.
No fewer than eight people have been reported killed, one of them a parent in the attack, which was carried out on` the first day of the new school term.
It 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 blamed on terrorists caused two Russian planes to crash, killing 90 people on board.
Officials at the crisis headquarters said that yesterday's release of some hostages came after mediation by an Afghan war veteran and former president of the neighbouring Ingushetia region Ruslan Ausher who is a respected figure in Russia's troubled caucasus region.
According to a report, the releases came amid heightened tension after two large explosions roared out yesterday afternoon, followed by a plume of black smoke rising from the vicinity of the school.
The rescue operation's headquarters said militants in the school fired grenade launchers at two cars that had apparently driven too close to the building. It added that neither car was hit, but reporters said they saw a gutted car that had been hit, about 100 meters from the school.
Earlier yesterday, President Vladimir Putin pledged to do everything possible to save the lives of the hostages.
The militants who had reportedly threatened to blow up the building if authorities stormed it, also warned that they would kill hostages if any of their gang was hurt or injured.
In his first public remarks since the Wednesday morning hostage-taking, Putin said; "Our main task is, of course, to save the life and health of those who became hostages".
As negotiators scrambled to find a way out of the tense standoff, crowds distraught relatives and townspeople waited helplessly for news of their neighbours and loved ones, their distress sharpened by the rattle of gunfire from the cordoned-off crisis site.
But as talks via phone continued on-and-off throughout the night and morning, details about who the militants are and what they wanted remained unclear.
Renowned pediatrician, Leonid Roshal, who aided hostages during the deadly seizure of a Moscow Theatre by Chechens in 2002, is leading the talks. It was gathered that Roshal, whose participation, the militants had demanded, conveyed to the hostage-takers the promise of a safe corridor out, but the offer was refused.
The school in Beslan, a town of about 30,000, is in North Ossetia, near the Republic of Chechnya where separatist rebels have been fighting Russian forces since 1999. Suspicion in the raid fell on Chechen militants although no claim of responsibility has been made.
The series of attacks were seen as a blow to Putin, who cut short his working vacation in the Black Sea resort of Sochi to return to Moscow and postponed a planned two-day visit to Turkey, due to start yesterday.
In remarks broadcast on Russian television, Putin said: "We understand these acts are not only against private citizens of Russia but against Russia as a whole.
"What is happening in North Ossetia is horrible. It's horrible not only because some of the hostages are children but because this action can explode even a fragile balance of interconfessional and interethnic relations in the region."
Little was known about food and sanitary condition inside the school; offers to deliver food and water to the hostages were turned down, adding to the distress of the more than 2,000 waiting relatives and friends outside.
Many of the parents spent the night at the town's cultural centre a few hundred meters from the school, weeping, pacing and trying to sleep, while the camouflage-clad special forces maintained their positions encircling the school.
"Just look in the eyes of any person here and you'll understand immediately what people are feeling," said Zelim Dzheriyev, 35, as he wiped tears from his eyes.
Valery Andreyev, the Federal Security Service's chief in North Ossetia, told reporters that elders from Chechnya and Ingushetia had offered to come to the school and act as stand-in hostages for the women and children inside. He also said that some of the militants had been identified, and investigators were attempting to find their relatives and bring them to the school to help in negotiations. Two Arab television stations had also offered to help negotiate, Andreyev said.
From inside the school, the militants sent out a list of demands and threatened that if police intervened, they would kill 50 children for every hostage-taker killed and 20 children for every hostage-taker injured, Dzantiyev told ITAR-Tass. Dzugayev estimated there were between 15 and 24 militants.
How the police could end the standoff without a storming was unclear, but Andreyev told the ITAR-Tass news agency that "there is no alternative to dialogue."
"One should expect long and tense negotiations," the Federal Security Service official was quoted as saying.
The Moscow theatre hostage-taking ended after an unidentified knockout gas was pumped into the building, but the gas was responsible for almost all of the 129 hostage deaths.
Gennady Gudkov, a retired Federal Security Service colonel and a member of the Russian parliament's defence committee, said there is little chance that authorities will resort to a knockout gas this time - particularly since medical experts said it tended to have a stronger effect on children. "I don't think that in this case anyone would have the courage to use gas or any other means," he was quoted as telling Russia's Gazeta.ru Web site.
With violence spreading across the country, many Russians worry about their safety. Official talk of increasing security after terrorist attacks is dismissed by many, and although tight measures were put in place in North Ossetia after the hostage crisis, few signs of major changes have been visible elsewhere.
Khachik Danilov, 53, who studied at the school in Beslan, called on authorities to take a tougher approach toward terrorists. "Why are we giving them prison terms, feeding them, giving them beds
Putin pledged five years ago to crush Chechnya's rebels but instead has seen the insurgents increasingly strike civilian targets beyond the republic's borders.
President Bush called Putin and "condemned the taking of hostages and the other terrorists attacks in Russia," White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said. Bush offered "assistance" to Russia in dealing with the crisis if requested, but no request had been made so far, the White House said.
After an emergency session called for by Russia, the United Nations Security Council condemned "the heinous terrorist act" and demanded the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.
The school covers grades 1-11, but regional Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said that most of the children taken hostage were under 14 years old. Russia's Izvestia newspaper reported many of the older children had managed to escape.
Dzugayev, the North Ossetia presidential aide, said brief contact with the captors indicated they were treating the children "more or less acceptably" and were holding them separately from the adults.
The attackers' demands were unclear, he said, adding that they might be from Chechnya or another neighboring region, Ingushetia, where militants mounted coordinated assaults on police facilities in June, killing some 90 people. ITAR-Tass reported that the school raiders' demands included freedom for people arrested in the Ingushetia attacks.
In Washington, a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hostage-takers were believed to be Chechen rebels.
A representative of Aslan Mashkhadov, a separatist leader who was Chechnya's president during three years of de-facto independence that ended in 1999, denied involvement in a statement published on a separatist Web site.
The site also dismissed reports that the raiders were part of the so-called Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs, a group accused of taking part in the Moscow theater raid. The group is believed to be under the command of Chechnya's notorious warlord Shamil Basayev.
Valery Andreyev, head of the FSB security service in North Ossetia province, told journalists: "There is no question at the moment of opting for force. There will be a lengthy and tense process of negotiation."
The mood of residents swung from anxiety to anger against the authorities for bringing calamity on them.
"These children are not to blame if bandits come here. It's the authorities who are to blame. They can't restore order or guard the borders. They just guard their own houses," Ruslan Tivitov, 27, said in a comment typical of a growing mood.
The crisis, in which the gunmen have used tactics bearing the hallmarks of past Chechen rebel attacks, gives Putin one of the hardest choices in his four and a half years in the Kremlin.
Should he risk a slaughter by following his past practice of sending troops to end such sieges, or try to save the children by breaking a long-held vow not to negotiate with "terrorists
He made a similar public commitment to do all he could to save the hostages in the deadly Moscow theatre siege in 2002. When Russian troops eventually stormed the building, 129 hostages and 41 guerrillas were killed.
Hostage-taking is the latest in a spate of deadly attacks the government says are the work of Chechen separatists.
"Their (the hostage-takers') demands must be fulfilled, whatever they want. If they want to get away from here, they should be given a free way out," said Soslan Paguyev whose daughter and some friends were among those held.
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