Russians Grieve Worst Terror Attack in Country’s History
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BESLAN, Russia – As a heavy rain poured down yesterday over this close-knit community, scores of children who died in the worst hostage siege in Russian history were buried amid the sound of weeping mothers and the smell of freshly dug graves.
Ankle-deep in mud, relatives carried out burials yesterday for about 170 of those killed in the hostage crisis. Most of the ceremonies were solemn, with men standing grim-faced and women softly weeping, but in many cases families could not contain their grief. One woman beside an open casket of a young boy wailed, “Why, God, why did you take him so early?”
Russia observed the first of two days of national mourning yesterday after the siege, which began last Wednesday with 30 attackers seizing a school in this southern Russian city and demanding an independent Chechnya.
It ended Friday with half-naked children running screaming into the streets in a hail of gunfire and explosions.
Russians rallied yesterday in remembrance of the victims, with some 15,000 people taking to the streets of St. Petersburg to condemn terrorism.
They carried Russian flags and signs that read “Death to Killers of Children” and “Terrorists Are Not People.” A huge rally, expected to bring out more than 100,000 people, is scheduled for today outside of the Kremlin in Moscow.
During yesterday’s funerals, many Beslan residents still searched for loved ones. People wandered through the town of about 30,000, showing pictures of the missing and begging passersby for any new information. Relatives were still lined up outside the morgue in the nearby city of Vladikavkaz to inspect bodies, but with many of the corpses so severely burned it may take days to identify the dead.
About 100 former hostages remained unaccounted for yesterday, Russia’s Interior Ministry said. Many of the dead had not been identified as their bodies were charred beyond recognition. The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that about 60 would need DNA analysis.
Albina Bagatova, 33, was still looking for her 10-year-old daughter Alana, who was taken hostage at the school along with her 12-year-old brother Khetag and their grandmother. “We have found my son and my mother, but we can’t find Alana,” Ms. Bagatova said. “We’ve looked everywhere, in every hospital, but I don’t know where she is.”
Other families meanwhile visited the gutted shell of the school where the hostage-takers held more than 1,000 captives for 53 hours.
Countless signs of the battle between the hostage-takers and Russian forces that ended the siege were strewn in the rubble: bullet-scored and blackened corridors, bloodstained walls and clothing, even pieces of rotting flesh left lying amid the schoolbooks that littered the floor.
The official death toll from the crisis stood yesterday at 335, plus the 30 attackers, and the Emergency Situations Ministry said 156 of the dead were children. Of the more than 700 people hospitalized after the crisis, 411 remained in the hospital yesterday – 214 of them children. Some of the worst injured had been taken for treatment to major medical centers, including 23 to Moscow.
A prosecutor said yesterday that the terrorists belonged to a cell formed by Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, the head of the most radical group of fighters.
Mr. Basayev has been blamed for a series of attacks in Russia – including a suicide bombing in Moscow last week that killed 10 and twin plane crashes earlier this month killed 90 – that have claimed the lives of hundreds over the past several years.
Russian authorities contend that Chechen terrorists have strong links with international terror groups, including Al Qaeda.
In Jerusalem yesterday, Israel and Russia signed a memorandum to cooperate in fighting international terrorism.
“The terrorism that struck in Russia is exactly the same kind of terrorism that strikes us,” Prime Minister Sharon said with the visiting Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, at his side.
Details of the agreement were vague and when pressed by reporters, Mr. Lavrov said “the specific issues will be resolved in Moscow.”
Also yesterday, the respected editor of Russia’s Izvestia newspaper, Raf Shakirov, stepped down yesterday in a move he said was forced on him because of his paper’s critical coverage.
Russia’s press, usually subdued in its coverage of the government, has been unusually critical of how security forces handled the crisis.