Russian forces storm school
Reports: Most children alive, five hostage-takers dead
Posted 03.09.2004

BESLAN, Russia -- Special forces have stormed a school in southern Russia after dozens of hostages escaped as the building's roof collapsed, Russian news agencies reported.

Interfax said Russian commandos were in control of most of the school Friday. Russian television NTV said five of the hostage-takers were killed.

Interfax quoted a Russian official as saying most of the children hostages are alive.

"Those children who remained in the school, in general, did not suffer. The ones who suffered were the children in the group which ran from the school and on whom the fighters opened fire," Interfax quoted the official as saying, Reuters reported.

Several loud explosions and small-arms fire were heard for nearly an hour near the school where armed hostage-takers have been holding hundreds of children, parents and teachers.

Children who escaped in their underwear were crowded into a makeshift area surrounded by Russian military vehicles outside the school.

CNN's Ryan Chilcote reported seeing numerous wounded, including a young boy on a stretcher, being evacuated from the area around the school.

Interfax said earlier a group of about 30 hostages escaped from the school and quoted authorities as saying the school roof had collapsed.

The explosions and gunfire came as relatives and journalists were told by authorities to move further back from the school.

"This is horrific, this is precipitating very quickly," Chilcote said.

Chilcote said that according to Russian news agencies, the gunfire erupted when some of the hostage-takers tried to break out of the school as Russian troops approached to collect the bodies of those killed in Wednesday's initial attack.

Two bombs went off in the vicinity of the school, and children tried to escape. The hostage-takers then turned their gunfire on the children, the agencies reported.

Earlier, Russian officials said hundreds more hostages may be inside the school than first thought.

As the crisis entered its third day Friday, a spokesman for the regional government told CNN an earlier estimate of 350 hostages was low.

Two of 26 hostages freed by their captors on Thursday indicated there were 1,000 children, parents and teachers inside the building in Beslan, near the troubled Russian republic of Chechnya.

Relatives waiting outside the school also have said there could be as many as 1,000 hostages, noting that the school has 11 grades with 75-100 students in each grade.

Asked about the discrepancy with the earlier estimate, the regional government spokesman said officials originally accounted only for those children whose parents reported them missing.

But teachers also were in the school when armed attackers seized the building Wednesday morning.

And many of the children -- especially in the lower grades -- were accompanied by their parents and in some cases entire families for a celebration to mark the start of the school year.

"The situation in school very, very dire," Chilcote said.

"Two of the 26 women and children released yesterday are saying the situation is very bad inside the school's gymnasium where the hostages are being kept.

"At one point the men were separated from the women and children. The men were then brought back into the gymnasium, but there weren't as many of them, and there's no word what happened to the other men."

"There is no food and water. At one point the hostage-takers brought them one cup of water for, as they put it, 1,000 hostages."

Russian officials say they are continuing to talk with the captors by telephone, but so far have failed to convince them to let officials bring water and food inside the school.

Earlier, two loud explosions jolted the area. Authorities said the explosions were caused by grenades fired from hand-held launchers from inside the school.

The hostage-takers told negotiators by cell phone that they fired because they claimed there was troop movement near the building.

Sporadic small arms fire occurred throughout the day, but there had been no shots for several hours before the blasts, which went off around 12:30 a.m. on Friday (2030 GMT Thursday).

Russian troops, tanks and armored vehicles ring the school, beyond which are hundreds of frantic relatives and friends of those trapped inside the building.

The attackers have threatened to kill the children if an assault is launched.

"Our most important task in the current situation is, of course, to save the lives and health of those who were taken hostage," Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.

Leading the talks was the former president of Ingushetia, Ruslan Aushev, who has entered the school and met face-to-face with the captors. Ingushetia is a Russian republic bordering Chechnya.

Tense negotiations with the hostage-takers saw 26 women and children -- some of them infants -- released from the school Thursday. Security forces in military fatigues carried the children to safety.

"The freeing of 26 is a big victory, but if you look at the whole picture, it is just a drop, there's still a lot of work to be done," said negotiator and pediatrician Leonid Roshal.

Roshal said he has been negotiating with a man by the name of Shai Khu, who has described himself as the group's press attache.

"Unfortunately, they have again refused to receive medicines, food and water for the children," Roshal said. "He calls himself a warrior. I told him warriors don't behave like this."

Roshal was also involved in negotiations with Chechens who seized a Moscow theater in the middle of a performance in October 2002, holding more than 700 people hostage.

One of the requests made of the attackers is that the families of those killed in the initial assault on the school be allowed to remove the bodies of their loved ones from in front of the building.

Authorities said there are seven bodies. Ten others were wounded in the taking of the primary school around 9 a.m. Wednesday.

Officials believe there are between 15 and 20 armed assailants, at least two of whom are women. Some are reported to be wearing explosives-packed belts.

Theater siege
The crisis was reminiscent of the October 2002 siege of a Moscow theater, when Chechen rebels threatened to kill their hostages and demanded an end to the war in Chechnya.

Many of those attackers were women, with explosives belts strapped to their body, while the men were armed with pistols and rifles. Two massive bombs also had been placed in the theater.

That standoff ended when Russian forces piped poison gas into the theater to knock out everyone inside, but more than 120 hostages and 41 attackers were killed, most of them from the gas.

The current standoff follows a bloody week in Russia. A female suicide bomber killed nine people outside a Moscow subway station Tuesday, and two suspected Chechen female suicide bombers downed two airliners on August 24, killing all 89 people aboard the planes.

Russian officials have said the new wave of attacks is an attempt at revenge for last weekend's elections in Chechnya in which a Kremlin-backed candidate won the presidency.

Beslan is 30 kilometers (19 miles) north of Vladikavkaz in southern Russia, which borders Chechnya.