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Journalism of Courage
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a clampdown in the Caucasus on Saturday after a hostage seizure at a school by Chechen separatists ended in a bloodbath with 322 people killed, half of them children.
In a visit at dead of night to the hospital in Beslan, Putin warned separatist sympathisers they would be viewed as ‘‘accomplices of terrorism’’. The death toll after Friday’s bloody climax to the two-day siege included 155 school children, many of them held inside a gym by their captors, and confirmed the episode as the grimmest hostage-taking of modern times. Officials confirmed for the first time media reports that the separatists had taken more than 1,000 people hostage when they stormed into the school on Wednesday.
A total of 26 militants, 10 of them Arabs according to officials, had staged the hostage seizure, said Deputy Prosecutor-General Sergei Fridinsky. All had been killed.
‘‘As a result of the terrorist acts, 322 people were killed, 155 of whom were children … I think the death toll will rise, but probably not very much,’’ Fridinsky said.
Putin said he had ordered Beslan and North Ossetia to be sealed off in follow-up operations by security forces.
‘‘One of the tasks pursued by the terrorists was to stoke ethnic hatred, to blow up the whole of our North Caucasus,’’ he told security officials.
‘‘Anyone who feels sympathetic towards such provocations will be viewed as accomplices of terrorists and terrorism.’’
He also declared national mourning on September 6 and 7. Moscow bridled quickly at a more querulous statement by the EU’s Dutch presidency demanding an explanation for the bloodshed.
The large number of dead left barely a family untouched in Beslan. A backwater of the Caucasus, the town was a swirl of grief, anger and uncertainty.
Some vented their anger against Putin. ‘‘Putin came here at four this morning,’’ said Boris, whose neighbour and her family disappeared.
‘‘He just wanted to show the world how young and handsome he is but he hasn’t helped and he won’t help and he can’t stop this happening again.’’ —(Reuters)
