Hundreds Seized in Terror Attack on Russian School
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

BESLAN, Russia – Armed terrorists, some wearing suicide-bomb belts, stormed an elementary school yesterday and seized hundreds of hostages, including 200 children on the first day back to school.
A soldier at the scene told The New York Sun late last night that he witnessed children’s bodies being thrown out of a window of the school earlier in the day.
The crisis follows a series of attacks on Russian soil blamed on Chechen rebels, including a suicide bomb in Moscow on Tuesday that killed 10 people and simultaneous plane crashes last week that left 90 people dead.
At least two people were killed during the siege, including a father who had brought his child to the school and was shot when he tried to resist the attackers, said a spokeswoman for the regional parliament, Fatima Khabolova.
An attacker also was killed and 11 people were wounded, she said. It was unclear how many died after the initial attack on the school.
The siege took place during the first day of the Russian school year, when parents usually accompany their children to school. Terrorists warned they would blow up the school if police tried to storm it and forced children to stand at the windows, said a police spokesman for southern Russia, Alexei Polyansky. The attackers said that if police intervened, they would kill 50 children for every hostage-taker killed and 20 children for every hostage-taker injured, the head of the North Ossetia region’s Interior Ministry, Kazbek Dzantiyev, was quoted as telling the ITARTass news agency.
Sporadic gunfire could be heard coming from direction of the school late last night. Near the school, a group of Russian special forces sat in a parked jeep. One of the soldiers, who gave his name only as Oleg, said his unit had abandoned the position closer to the school after coming under sniper fire late last night. He said snipers were shooting at anyone who approached the building. A 35-year-old man who tried to get close was shot dead late last night. Oleg said stray dogs were picking at the body.
“We’re trying to get permission to shoot at the dogs but they won’t let us,” said Oleg, dressed in black fatigues with a Kalashnikov strung over his shoulder.
He told the Sun that earlier in the day his unit had seen seven bodies thrown out of a window at the school, including a number of children.
In this town of about 36,000, which is about 10 miles north of the regional capital of Vladikavkaz, residents and relatives of the hostages gathered in a local cultural center to comfort each other and to get periodic information provided by officials. Marina Tsegbrae va, 42, whose mother, brother, sister-inlaw, and 6-year-old nephew were taken hostage, worried that the siege would end in bloodshed.
“There will be suffering. They will never negotiate with the terrorists,” she told the Sun.
Garik Brikhov, 34, whose 28-year-old wife, Ludmila, and 9-year-old daughter, Gamara, were trapped inside the school, said the hostage takers were “animals” but called on Russian authorities to give in to the demands. “What’s most important is that they save these people,” he said.
Mr. Polyansky said most of the attackers were wearing suicide bomb belts. ITAR-Tass, citing regional emergency officials, said about 400 people, including some 200 children, were being held captive. 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 a regional spokesman for the Federal Security Service, Ismel Shaov.
Parents of the seized children recorded a videocassette appeal to President Putin to fulfill the terrorists’ demands, Ms. Khabalova said. The text of the appeal was not immediately available.
The Russian defense minister, Sergei Ivanov, said yesterday that the recent attacks amounted to a declaration of war.
“In essence, war has been declared on us, where the enemy is unseen and there is no front,” he said.
President Bush called Mr. Putin yesterday and said America is prepared to give any help needed to resolve the crisis, the Kremlin said, according to an Associated Press dispatch. Mr. Bush emphasized that Washington and Moscow are fighting terrorism shoulder-to-shoulder, it said.
Russia has fought two brutal campaigns to suppress a separatist uprising in the mainly Muslim republic of Chechnya. The most recent violence appears to be timed around last Sunday’s presidential elections, in which the Kremlin backed candidate, Alu Alkhanov, won an overwhelming victory. The previous Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed in a bomb attack in the Chechen capital, Grozny, in May.
The attackers demanded talks with regional officials and a well-known pediatrician, Leonid Roshal, who had aided hostages during the seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002, news reports said. At least 129 hostages died in that incident, most from effects of a knockout gas pumped into the building, and 41 attackers were reported killed.
The hostage-takers at the school 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.
This is the second time Chechen rebels have seized hostages in southern Russia. In 1995, rebels seized a hospital in Budyonnovsk, taking some 2,000 people hostage. The six-day standoff ended with a fierce Russian police assault. Some 100 people died in the incident.