Terrorists storm school in southern Russia

Armed terrorists stormed a school in southern Russia near the separatist region of Chechnya Wednesday morning, taking hundreds of students, teachers and parents hostage after a shootout with local police, authorities said.

During the assault, at least two people were killed, authorities said, including a father who had brought his child to the school and was shot when he challenged the attackers. A hostage-taker also was reported killed. News agencies quoted some hospital officials as saying as many as eight people had died.

Special forces soldiers surround a school seized by attackers in the town of Beslan. (Russian Television/APTN via AP).

• Attackers seized Russian school in a region bordering Chechnya.

The hostage-takers threatened to blow up the school if attacked by authorities and to kill 50 children for every rebel killed, according to Russian press reports. The Russian news service ITAR-TASS said the attackers demanded, among other things, the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya.

The school is located in the town of Beslan in the Republic of North Ossetia, to the east of Chechnya.

While authorities have not formally identified the nationality of the attackers, they are assumed to be Chechen rebels, who have staged numerous lethal guerrilla attacks and hostage-takings across Russia as part of their drive for secession. Chechen rebels have also been operating in North Ossetia as well as in the neighboring Republic of Ingushetia.

At Russia's request, the U.N. Security Council called an emergency meeting Wednesday to discuss the wave of deadly terrorist attacks in Russia. The 15-nation council planned to convene at 5 p.m., the Reuters news service said, and was expected to issue a statement at the meeting's close condemning the attacks as a threat to international peace and security, council diplomats said.

Estimates of the number of hostages changed throughout the day from 400 to 120. The most recent estimate from police in North Ossetia is 300. News services reported that 15 hostages were released early in the day. They also reported that 50 children who hid from the attackers managed to escape on their own.

In addition to demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya, the hostage-takers demanded the release of fighters seized in Ingushetia in June during a huge rebel raid on the region. They insisted they would negotiate only with the presidents of Ingushetia and North Ossetia.

The attack came around 9 a.m. Wednesday at the end of an opening day assembly in the gym. About 20 guerrillas, dressed in black and wielding grenades, drove up in a military-type transport truck and stormed into the school.

The first images broadcast on NTV from the scene of the standoff in Beslan showed Russian soldiers in camouflage taking cover outside the school amid the sound of gunfire. At one point, a young girl in a flowered dress and an older woman were seen fleeing the building, urged to safety by a soldier in a bulletproof vest.

The taking of hostages has been a common tactic of the separatists in their decade-long battle for independence from Russia. Russian troops moved on Chechnya in 1994 to stop the republic's secession.

The audacious attack followed a wave of deadly bombings that have spread terror across Russia in the past week. Just hours before the raid on the school, a female suicide bomber blew herself up outside a Moscow metro station, killing at least 10 bystanders and wounding dozens more. A week before that, two Russian airliners exploded in mid-flight, brought down by what authorities now say was a terrorist act likely carried out by two Chechen women.

An Islamic extremist group with apparent ties to al Qaeda that claimed responsibility for the plane crashes asserted that it carried out the Tuesday night bombing as well. "We in the Islambouli Brigades announce our responsibility for this operation ... which comes in support of Muslims of Chechnya," it said in a statement, according to news agency reports from the Middle East.

President Vladimir Putin blamed the outbreak of violence across Russia on international terrorists linked to al Qaeda in league with separatist Chechens. In comments made as news of the school seizure was breaking, Putin told journalists he would continue his policy of not negotiating with Chechen guerrillas. "We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them," he said.
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