BESLAN, Russia : Scores of school children killed in a hostage siege were laid to rest in an overflowing cemetery here amid wrenching grief as fury swelled in Russia over the crisis and the government's handling of it.
As the country observed the first of two days of national mourning, security was ordered strengthened at all schools and international medical aid poured in while aftershocks from the disaster reverberated here and around the world.
Funeral processions filled the streets of Beslan throughout the day and distraught crowds converged on the town's cemetery for the burials of more than 100 victims as the entire town turned out to mourn friends and loved ones under rain and leaden skies.
"Why God, why did you take him so early?" wailed one woman beside the open casket of a young boy, one of the hundreds of children, parents and teachers who died in the battle between their captives and security forces on Friday.
The catastrophe was the worst of its kind in modern Russian history and was only the latest in a string of recent attacks that included the downing of two passenger jets and a suicide bombing outside a crowded Moscow subway station.
Unlike those attacks however, the bloodshed in Beslan which left 335 people dead, half of them children, and hundreds of wounded has sparked a primal anger among some Russians that the government was struggling to dispel.
The Russian press lashed out at President Vladimir Putin, saying his effort to link rebel fighters in Chechnya with international terrorism was a cynical ploy to escape blame for his uncompromising policy on the separatist fighters.
Responsibility for the Beslan crisis "lies without doubt with President Putin, with the FSB security services and the interior ministry," the respected liberal lawmaker Vladimir Ryzhkov wrote in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
"You cannot hide behind the theme of international terrorism. The French, British, and US governments are managing to resolve the problems in their countries," he said.
Andrei Ryabov, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, articulated a question increasingly on the minds of many Russians wondering who was in charge of handling the hostage siege and who will be brought to account.
"Where was the eloquent Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov who on Tuesday had warned against the danger of new attacks?," Ryabov asked. "Where were the heads of the FSB security service and the interior ministry?"
Mounting criticism of Putin and the government however was counterbalanced by a surge of rage against "terrorists" who have carried out the attacks in Russia and displays of nationalist fervor.
In Saint Petersburg, some 15,000 people turned out Monday for a rally in remembrance of the Beslan victims and condemnation of terrorism. Many carried Russian flags and signs bearing slogans such as "Death to Killers of Children."
An "anti-terror" demonstration was also scheduled to be held Tuesday beside the Kremlin and organizers, the Kremlin among them, said they were expecting a turnout exceeding 100,000 people.
A Kremlin-controlled television network on Sunday also joined the chorus of criticism of the handling of the crisis, steering clear of attacking Putin himself and in effect backing his call for sweeping security restructuring.
Meanwhile, the the editor of the private centrist daily Izvestia said he had been forced to resign because the paper's coverage of the tragedy -- which included running a full-page heart-wrenching photo on its front page of a man carrying a terrified girl to safety -- had been judged too emotional by its owners.
The Beslan tragedy meanwhile also took on international political dimensions as the European Union expressed regret at a "misunderstanding" which led to a sharp rebuke from Moscow over EU comments asking for explanation of how the Russian hostage tragedy could have happened.
Analysts said that apart from straining relations between Russia and the EU, the diplomatic row also highlighted divisions within the block itself on how to handle Moscow.
Russian officials meanwhile reiterated their affirmation that Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev masterminded the Beslan attack.
Mikhail Lapotnikov, chief investigator for the north Caucasus prosecutor's office, was quoted by Interfax as saying that the hostage-takers, believed to number around 30, also took part in a raid in Ingushetia last June claimed by Basayev.
AFP (Source: Channel News Asia)
Chechen rebel leader Basayev is mastermind behind school assault: report
MOSCOW: The Russian news agency ITAR-Tass has quoted an unidentified intelligence official as saying that the Beslan school assault was financed by Abu Omar As-Seyf, an Arab who allegedly represents Al Qaeda in Chechnya, and masterminded by Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev.
Basayev is a known figure in the Chechnya insurgency, where he has been active in the violent fight for Chechen independence from Russia.
In 1995, during the first of two wars in Chechnya in the past decade, rebels led by Basayev seized a hospital in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk, taking some 2,000 people hostage.
The six-day standoff ended with a fierce Russian assault, and some 100 people died.
Terrorism analyst Sajjan Gohel of the London-based Asia-Pacific Foundation said Basayev has sought to create an "Islamic super-state" in southern Russia.
Basayev went to militant training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1990s, he said, and it was there that he met senior Al Qaeda members and learned about Islamist doctrines.
Mr Gohel said Basayev then returned to Chechnya to fight Russian troops using those doctrines.
"He in fact removed the nationalist dimension and made it a far more international problem," he added.
Regional Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said on Sunday that the hostage-takers were reportedly demanding independence for Chechnya.
Two major hostage-taking raids by Chechen rebels outside the war-torn region in the past decade provoked Russian rescue operations that led to many deaths.
The seizure of a Moscow theatre in 2002 ended after a knockout gas was pumped into the building, debilitating the captors but causing almost all of the 129 hostage deaths. – CAN
(Source: Channel News Asia)
Thousands rally in Moscow against terror after Beslan tragedy
MOSCOW : Tens of thousands of Russians massed outside the Kremlin to express their anger at terror after the Beslan school hostage tragedy, as families pressed on with an agonising search for loved ones still missing.
A sea of people, brandishing banners, religious insignia and Russian flags stood in grief at the deaths of the 335 hostages and rescuers killed in the hostage siege and the 100 killed in plane attacks and a Moscow suicide bombing in past weeks.
The Interfax agency cited official police figures as saying 130,000 people turned out for the rally, which took place to the accompaniment of stirring Russian traditional music.
'Terror Is Worse Than Plague', 'The Enemy Will Be Defeated', 'The Victory Will Be Ours', read some of the slogans on banners carried by the demonstrators, who braved the same driving rain that marked funerals in Beslan the day earlier.
"We are not weak we are strong, strong strong ... We will win," said Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, in an impassioned speech, shaking his fist in the air, and echoing the patriotic atmosphere at the gathering.
"How can you kill children and shoot them? I came because Russia was slapped in the face and we will not take it," said Valery, a pensioner with a row of medals proudly strapped to his lapel.
Many of those who turned out in front of Saint Basil's Cathedral for the demonstration carried images of Saint George slaying the dragon.
The rally, which was backed by the local authorities and lasted barely an hour, was marked by strict security including sniffer dogs used to patrol the area in advance of the rally.
However the demonstration attracted criticism for being an officially-approved expression of protest rather than the spontaneous outpouring of grief seen in Spain after the March 11 attacks on Madrid.
"I would have preferred if it the Russians reacted like the Spanish, who didn't wait to be called out and went out onto the street altogether to say no to terror," said Elena Frantsuskaya, 48.
Meanwhile, the agony of Beslan continued.
Some 70 more burials were expected, while relatives whose missing loved ones have yet to be accounted for as dead or wounded held an emotional meeting with local authorities.
These relatives, clutching photographs of loved ones, exist in the torture of uncertainty. Some claim they even glimpsed their children in the anarchy after the hostage siege ended.
Mzivinari Ochishvili, whose 12-year-old daughter Bella is missing, said: "We have been everywhere, in all the hospitals and in all the morgues. A classmate of hers saw her being taken away in an ambulance and we haven't heard of her since."
Despite Russia's grief, questions remained over the Kremlin's role in the three-day siege that ended with an unplanned storming by security forces and horrific scenes of loss and carnage.
French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin echoed international concerns that the circumstances of the assault, triggered after two massive explosions in the gymnasium where over 1,000 hostages were held, were still unexplained.
"We wish to express both our solidarity in the face of this terrorist act against Russia, but we also wish to have all the necessary information," Raffarin said on RTL radio.
President Vladimir Putin, in an interview with British newspapers, however ruled out a public inquiry into the events and scoffed at any notion that the authorities would negotiate with militants from Chechnya.
A former member of the Russian special forces told the Vremya Novostei newspaper that troops knew a successful raid on the school was not possible, adding they had not even been given a plan of the building.
"All the specialists agreed that for several reasons it was impossible to opt for an operation of force in the school," said Igor Senin, president of the veterans' association for the crack Alpha anti-terrorist unit.
Criticism of the authorities, largely relayed through the liberal press, has focussed on how Moscow ministers kept their distance from the town of Beslan, preferring to let local officials handle the siege and take the flak.
So far the only political victim has been North Ossetian interior minister, Kazbeck Dzantiev, who stepped down at the weekend.
"We are tired of digesting any kind of information feeling like obedient slaves. We need to find out the truth... We have the right to ask questions," one of the original organisers of the Moscow protest, radio station head Vladimir Solovyev, told Izvestia.
Concerns about press freedom in Russia were amplified after the editor of Izvestia was sacked by the paper's tycoon owner for his "emotional" coverage of the hostage crisis that included a full page photo of a man carrying a terrified girl to safety.
The Beslan catastrophe was the worst of its kind in modern Russian history and the latest in a string of recent attacks that included the deaths of 90 in downing of two passenger jets and a suicide bombing outside a crowded Moscow subway station that killed 10.
- AFP
(Source: Channel News Asia)
