More Than 200 Killed in Russian School Shootout

By Richard Ayton and Oliver Bullough

BESLAN, Russia (Reuters) - Russian troops stormed a school on Friday, blaming Chechen hostage-takers for a bloody battle in which more than 200 people -- dozens of them children -- were killed and hundreds were wounded.

Terrified children, some naked and others with bloodied faces, ran screaming for safety after a 53-hour ordeal at the hands of gunmen with bombs strapped to their waists. Machinegun fire rattled out and helicopters clattered overhead.

The military operation against the gunmen, "who put up lengthy resistance in the school is now over," a Russian official overseeing the mission was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency late on Friday night.

Russian troops -- with special forces spearheading the storming -- killed 27 hostage-takers and captured three alive, officials told Interfax.

Burly soldiers grabbed the fleeing children and rushed them to waiting medics. Some had blood streaming from wounds.

"I smashed the window to get out," one boy with a bandaged hand told Russian television. "People were running in all directions ... (The guerrillas) were shooting from the roof."

The children, many stripped to their underwear after two days without food or drink in stiflingly hot and crowded conditions, gulped down bottles of water and waited in a daze for relatives as gunfire crackled round them.

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   BBC WORLD NEWS SUMMARY   98                           回课件首页

              Russia mourns for school siege victims
    Russia is holding two days of national mourning for more than 330 people
    killed in the hostage-taking at a school in the southern town of Beslan.
    Flags are at half-mast and TV entertainment programmes have been
    cancelled. The first funerals were held yesterday; about 100 more are 
    due today.                  
                            

 

       
       Relatives grieve(悲痛)over the body of Vasily Reshetnyak,
       an eight year-old hostage killed in Russia's school siege
    (围困),during his funeral in the town of Beslan, September
       7, 2004. Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected(拒绝)
       any dialogue with Chechen separatists, blamed(应受谴责)for
       at least 335 deaths in the school hostage siege, as hundreds
       of thousands joined rallies(集结)against terrorism.
       REUTERS/Grigory Dukor

 

 

Local resident lays flowers on debris(碎片)of the gymnasium at 
a school, which was seized by heavily armed masked(戴面具的) 
men and women, in the town of Beslan in the province of North 
Ossetia near Chechnya, September 6, 2004. Flags flew at half-
mast across Russia on Monday at the start of national mourning 
for 338 people killed when Chechen rebels seized a school, while questions mounted(增加)over President Vladimir Putin's policies. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin