In the aftermath it was learned that the
hostage-takers had refused to let food or water into the school throughout
the standoff. The regional health minister reported that 409 people were
wounded, including at least 218 children. By Friday morning conditions
were so bad that people could hardly breathe. Hostage Salimat Suleimanova
said: "So many children lay unconscious without food and water."
Others reported: "Most of kids were almost unconscious. Those who
could move started to pee into shoes and then drink urine. They would make
several sips of urine and then would stop and cry because their lips were
chapped and the urine stung their skin." Indira Dzetskelova, the
mother of one of the child hostages in
Beslan
,
Russia
, reports that "several 15-year-old girls were raped by
terrorists." Her daughter "heard their terrible cries and
screams when those monsters took them away." Her traumatised daughter
Dzerase sobbed as she added: "When the assault started, some of us
were running out through the school dining room. "The terrorists
started to shoot from the roof, then one of them ran into the dining room
and started to shoot from the window. "I saw kids and women falling
to the ground. And I saw that vermin's face. I saw his smile as he killed
my friends." Diana Gadzhieva, 14, was held with her sister Akinba,
aged 11. She told how the rebels executed all the adult men in a room
upstairs. "We saw groups of men hostages going out and never coming
back." Other survivors told how screaming teenage girls were dragged
into rooms adjoining the gymnasium where they were being held and raped by
their Chechen captors. Witnesses reported that a black-clad terrorist who
had run out of ammunition had repeatedly stabbed even an 18-month-old
baby.
Officials told FOX News
that 10 of the 20 terrorists killed by Russian soldiers were Arabs.
Jihadists from the
Middle East
are known to have joined the Chechen uprising. A just rescued mother
described the hostages' three days of hell in the Russian School
Gymnasium. She told reporters of the terrorists holding up the corpse of a
man just shot dead in front of hundreds of hostages, his pockets stuffed
with ammunition and grenades, warning: "If a child utters even a
sound, we'll kill another one." When children fainted from lack of
sleep, food and water, their masked and camouflaged captors simply
sneered. In the intolerable heat of the gym, adults implored children to
drink their own urine. Hours after escaping alive, a woman who had been
taken hostage with her 7-year-old son and her mother spoke of three days
of unspeakable horror of children so wired with fear they couldn't sleep,
of captors coolly threatening to kill hostages one by one, of a gymnasium
so cramped there was hardly room to move. "We were in complete
fear," said Alla Gadieyeva, 24, who spoke to an Associated Press
reporter, as she lay collapsed in exhaustion on a stretcher outside a
hospital. "People were praying all the time, and those that didn't
know how to pray we taught them".
Alla told reporters that
she and her mother, Irina, were in the school courtyard Wednesday seeing
off her son, Zaur, on his first day of school when they heard sounds like
"balloons popping." She thought the noise was part of school
festivities. But then five masked gunmen burst into the courtyard,
shooting in the air and ordering people to get inside the building.
Children, parents and teachers Alla estimated there were about 1000, were
herded into the gymnasium. Alla said children whimpered in fear, and all
around there was screaming and crying. The hostages were forced to crouch,
their hands folded over their heads. For the rebels, the first order of
business was confiscating cell phones. They smashed the phones, then
delivered a warning: "If we find any mobile phones, we will shoot 20
people all around you." The gymnasium was quickly transformed into an
arsenal of explosive bombs dangling from the ceiling, set on the floor,
strung up on walls. She said they seemed to be homemade, primitive
packages containing bolts and nails. On the first day, people got a tiny
bit of water to drink, but no food. After that, Alla said, nothing. When
she asked the rebels for water for her mother, they laughed at her.
"My mother was terrified, and I thought she was having a heart
attack. When I saw my son, my mother ... go unconscious, so tired, so
thirsty, I wanted it all to come to an end," she said. "When
children began to faint, they laughed," Alla said. "They were
totally indifferent." During the ordeal, Zaur became so traumatized
that he would flinch whenever someone touched him, or even brushed by him,
she said. As with most of the other children, his only spells of sleep
were the times he fell unconscious from thirst and exhaustion. When asked
how her son would remember the ordeal, Alla replied: "How can a
person ever forget it? Would you ever forget it?" As Alla spoke under
a grove of spruce trees, she had not yet been reunited with her mother or
son, although authorities confirmed to her that they were alive. She
recounted how the hostage-takers eventually took off their masks. They had
beards, long hair, and spoke with Chechen accents, she said. "They're
not human beings," Alla said. "What they did to us, I can't
understand." On Friday, early in the afternoon, explosions erupted
without warning, both inside and outside the gym, she said. In the chaos,
she couldn't figure out how they were set off. Gunfire followed. As the
battle intensified, the rebels betrayed agitation for the first time.
"We'll shoot until our guns stop," a rebel announced to the
crowd. "And when our guns stop, we'll blow up the building." The
hostage-takers began pushing people out of the gym and into the basement.
That created an opening for the hostages: They began breaking windows and
fleeing. Some pushed children outside. Alla said she helped her son and
mother through a window. She didn't manage to get out. For some reason, a
6-year-old boy whom she didn't know was drawn to Alla. She held him in her
arms. He clung to her, she said, "as if he would never let go."
A group of hostages, including Alla and the boy, finally made a rush for a
set of doors in the gymnasium. As they fled, she saw bodies of captives
strewn on the floor as rebels fought with Russian security troops swarming
around school compound. Some Russian soldiers appeared as they reached the
doors. "At first I didn't believe it," Alla said. "I
thought they were Chechens." Her doubts soon vanished. It's OK, the
soldiers told her. "You're home now." As Alla told her tale,
townspeople kept coming up, asking her about the fate of their loved-ones.
A man, around 20, asked Alla if she knew what had happened to one of the
captives, a woman. She's dead, Alla replied. The man bit his lip,
...nodded, ...and then turned away. The tragedy and travesty, though
thousands of miles away, might just as well have happened at the school in
your neighborhood. Those killed and maimed students, parents, and teachers
kept for days without water or food in a sweltering school building before
being butchered were, in essence, …our children, …our sisters, …our
wives, …and our parents!
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