16 killed in school terror attack

Heavily armed terrorists, many wearing belts packed with explosives, held more than 350 hostages, including children, through the night at a Russian school. Up to 16 people were thought to have died so far in the attack.

Crowds of distraught relatives and townspeople waited helplessly for news of their neighbours and loved ones, their distress sharpened by the sporadic rattle of gunfire from the cordoned-off crisis site.

The terrorists threatened to blow up the school if police storm it, but what they wanted and who they were remained unclear.

President Vladimir Putin, who cut short a working holiday to return to Moscow after the seizure, postponed his planned two-day visit to Turkey, due to start today.

The seized school in Belsan, 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 and suspicion in the raid fell on Chechen militants although no claim of responsibility has been made.

Casualty reports in the seizure varied, but one official said early today that 16 people were killed – 12 inside the school, two who died in hospital and two others whose bodies still lay outside the school and could not be removed because of gunfire. Thirteen others were wounded.

Negotiations via phone continued on-and-off throughout the night and early morning, involving well-known paediatrician Leonid Roshal, who aided hostages during the deadly seizure of a Moscow theatre by Chechens in 2002.

The hostage-takers had demanded his participation. Russia’s NTV television reported that Roshal had told the militants they would be promised a safe corridor out, but the request was refused.

At least two people were killed, including a pupil’s parent, when the militants descended on Middle School Number 1 on the opening day of the new school year yesterday. About a dozen people managed to escape by hiding in a boiler room, but hundreds of others were herded into the school gymnasium and some were placed at windows as human shields.

Little was known about food and sanitary condition inside the school. Offers to deliver food and water to the school were turned down.

Camouflage-clad special forces carrying assault rifles encircled the school, while the militants placed a sniper on an upper floor of the three-storey building.

Hours into the standoff Russian security officials used a phone number they were given and began negotiations with the hostage-takers.

During the night, officials reported that Roshal had established contact with the terrorists, which they had demanded. But those talks broke off about 3 am, Interfax reported.

More than 1,000 people, including many distraught parents, crowded outside police cordons demanding information and accusing the government of failing to protect their children.

“I’ve been here all day, waiting for anything,” said Svetlana Tskayeva, whose grown daughter and three grandchildren aged 10, 6 and six months were among the captives. “They’re not telling us anything. …It’s awful, it’s frightening.”

Many parents spent the night at the town’s cultural centre a few hundred yards from the school, weeping, pacing and trying to sleep.

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, Kazbek Dzantiyev, head of the North Ossetia region’s Interior Ministry, said. Dzugayev estimated there were between 15 and 24 militants.

Sporadic gunfire and explosions could be heard throughout the standoff.

US President George Bush called President Putin and “condemned the taking of hostages and the other terrorists attacks in Russia”. 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.

Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said that most of the children taken hostage were under 14 years old.

Most of the hostages had been herded into the school gym, but others - primarily children – were ordered to stand at the windows, he said. He said most of the militants were wearing suicide-bomb belts.

At least 12 children and one adult managed to escape after hiding in the building’s boiler room d

Hours after the seizure, the militants sent out a blank videotape, a message saying “Wait” and a note with a mobile phone number, Russian officials said.

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.