School Siege - Russia

(updated 3rd Sept 2004)

Key events in the hostage standoff at a school in Beslan in southern Russia. All times are local; some are approximate.

Wednesday, Sept. 1

9 a.m.: School seized by gunmen, shots exchanged with police. Death toll reports range from two to eight. More than a dozen wounded. Some attackers reported wearing suicide-bomb belts.

Noon: More gunfire, explosions reported.

4:40 p.m.: At least 12 children and one adult escape after hiding in boiler room, authorities say.

7:30 p.m.: Authorities establish contact with hostage takers.

Thursday, Sept. 2

10:15 a.m.: The Kremlin announces that President Vladimir Putin cancelled a trip to Turkey. Would have been first state visit by Russian leader for bilateral talks since Soviet collapse.

2 p.m.: Putin makes his first public comments on the standoff, calling the school seizure "horrible" and promising that all efforts by authorities will be devoted to the "main task ... to save the lives and health of those who became hostages."

Afternoon: Ruslan Aushev, Afghan war hero and former president of neighboring Ingushetia region, holds talks with hostage-takers in school gym. Aushev later credited with securing hostage releases.

4:45 p.m.: First hostages released, women and small children taken to safety. A total of 26 released, though one woman returns to school to remain with still-captive children.

8:00 p.m.: Officials say the number of hostages, previously thought to be around 350, could be more than 1,000.

9:00 p.m.: Local legislator says 20 male hostages were executed inside school. Negotiations with the hostage-takers continues, after overnight suspension, with efforts to persuade militants to allow a delivery of water, food and medicine for the captives.

Friday, Sept. 3

1 a.m.: Two loud bangs heard, authorities call it unprovoked firing by hostage-takers. One policeman reported wounded.

1 p.m.: Emergency workers approach school with agreement of militants to retrieve bodies of dead hostages that have been lying in front of the building for two days.

Explosions heard, possibly set off accidentally by militants. Hostages take it as signal to flee, militants open fire on fleeing hostages, security forces return fire, lead 30 women and children to safety.

1:45 p.m.: Militants begin fleeing building. Security forces pursue them in the town and storm the school building.

2 p.m.: More hostages freed. Ambulances and private cars take hundreds of wounded to hospitals. Scattered shooting heard as security forces search streets and nearby buildings for fleeing militants, some of them apparently women who have disguised themselves in hostages' clothing.

2:30 p.m.: As Russian commandos take complete control of school, they blow a a hole in a wall of the school to aid hostage escape.

3:17 p.m.: All the hostages are reportedly evacuated.

3:25 p.m.: Escaped militants are reportedly holed up in local home, which is surrounded by troops. Tank fire heard at the home. Intermittent gunfire continues at school but tapers off about 30 minutes later.

News reports say dozens of bodies found in the school, including around 100 in the gymnasium, some of them killed when the roof collapsed in an explosion. Ten militants are reported killed in gunbattle. More than 400 people reported wounded in the day's violence, including 180 children.

Russia Hostage Crisis Toll 358
Sami Amara • Arab News

MOSCOW, 5 September 2004 — The death toll in the hostage crisis in the southern Russian town of Beslan rose to 358 yesterday as President Vladimir Putin called for a new approach to law enforcement in the country.

Regional Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said 323 victims, including 156 children, had been killed in the violence. Russian Deputy Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said that all 35 attackers had been eliminated.

Medical officials said 448 people, including 248 children had been hospitalized as a result of the crisis, which ended in a wave of violence Friday. Commandos stormed the school and battled militants as crying children, some naked and covered with blood, managed to flee through explosions and gunfire after 53 hours during which the hostage-takers herded them into the gym, denied them food and water and threatened to kill them by detonating explosives they had rigged up.

Most of the dead had been in the school’s gymnasium, officials said. They were killed either by explosions that brought down the roof or by the fire and the battles between soldiers and captors that followed.

Freed hostages described Friday’s mayhem. “Bombs were strung all over the gym,” one teenage girl told state television. “Tape came unstuck on one and it blew up.”

“There were two big explosions,” said a woman in her 40s. “We started pushing all the children out of the windows... Everyone who was there started pushing them out.”

Explosives and arms used by the gunmen had been smuggled into the school well in advance during summer building work, Interfax quoted an unnamed regional security source as saying.

One source was quoted as saying the militants first scouted out two other schools before settling on School Number One — the main one in Beslan — because it was undergoing major reconstruction work over the summer. “Some of the teachers taken hostage recognized a few of the rebels because they worked on the school construction project,” Ismel Shaov, spokesman for the North Ossetian Interior Ministry, said.

“They brought in a lot of explosives while they were doing their work.”

Putin said international terrorists had declared “a full-scale war” against Russia, and that due to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nation was weakened and unable to respond as effectively as it must.

“In general, we need to admit that we did not show an understanding of the complexities and dangers of the processes occurring in our own country and in the world,” he said. “In any case, we couldn’t adequately react ... We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten.”