Posted Sunday, September 5, 2004; 11.27 BST
Sometimes it is the gift of children to keep their parents strong. Elena Kasumova felt her hope dying as she huddled with her son Timur, 9, in the sweltering gymnasium of School No. 1. It was Friday morning, and the hostage nightmare in Beslan, a small town in the Russian republic of North Ossetia, was in its third day. Kasumova, a 37-year-old teacher at the school, and Timur were among the nearly 1,200 hostages packed into the gym. Most of the children had long since stripped down to their underwear; some fainted from thirst, while others drank their own urine. The place was festooned with bombs: explosives hung down from the beams and the basketball hoops, some so low that the taller hostages banged their heads on them as they went to the toilet. That made the guerrillas very nervous. From the bombs came tangled wires snaking through the tight rows of children, connected to two spring-loaded detonator pedals held down by the feet of two guerrillas. If either man moved, the hostages were told, the room would explode. "Bear this in mind," one of the guerrillas said, referring to the Russian commandos who surrounded the building. "They are planning a storm. We will defend you to the last bullet, then blow ourselves up. We have nothing to lose. We came here to die."
Kasumova could see that the guerrillas were tense and exhausted. Since the siege had started, she had counted 16 of them — mostly bearded men in their 20s and most of them Chechen, the rest Ingush and Ossetian — though she suspected other fighters were stationed elsewhere in the school compound. What little mercy they had shown earlier in the siege was now gone. They fired their assault rifles to keep the Russian troops at bay. They bellowed orders at the hostages, refused pleas for water, and threatened to kill if the hostages didn't keep silent. At one point, Kasumova looked down and realized that she was still clutching the program from the celebration of the first day of school.
But when she felt her hope running out, her little boy rescued her. Timur massaged her feet and kissed her, and told her stories about all the water and juice they would drink when it was finally over. "He was so good to me," Kasumova says. Like the other children of Beslan, Timur became a soldier that day.
The explosion came at just after 1 p.m. One of those dangling bombs had apparently detonated. "A wave of burning hot air hit me and knocked me down," Kasumova says. "I saw two severed legs
One push and the Caucasus will be engulfed in one bloody, senseless melee
— RUSLAN KHASBULATOV, former Duma Speaker
lying next to me." The gym was full of smoke and screams, but she saw children climbing out of a window. She and Timur clambered through the opening and ran. "The guerrillas opened fire on us, and I saw one child go down, and then another," she says.
Russian special forces returned the rebel fire, joined by armed locals who, one general said, "got in the way." Russian soldiers grabbed Kasumova and Timur and hustled them off to safety. Behind them, there were more explosions, the roof of the gymnasium collapsed, and then there was pandemonium. Half-naked children, some burned or wounded, streamed out of the school as bullets whizzed around them and helicopters clattered overhead. The security cordon around the buildings broke down, with locals whisking the injured to safety in their arms, in scruffy little Soviet-era Zhiguli cars and in at least one Mercedes well before ambulances showed up. Police said some terrorists escaped wearing sports gear; gunfire spread to other parts of the city as the afternoon drew on, suggesting a manhunt. In the mayhem, one shocked and disheveled young woman who made it to safety moaned: "They are killing us all!"
By the time it was over, at least 330 people lay dead, including 156 children and 26 terrorists. More than 700 were wounded. The carnage was the latest and by far the most ghastly episode in a terror spree that began in July, leading up to a presidential election in Chechnya that was widely criticized as rigged by Moscow. The vote was made necessary when the Kremlin's hand-picked incumbent, Akhmad Kadyrov, was blown up in May at a rally in Grozny's Dynamo Stadium.
Within one week in July, two bus stops were bombed in the city of Voronezh, 600 km south of Moscow, killing three. On Aug. 24, an explosion ripped through a Moscow bus stop, injuring four. Three hours later, two female suicide bombers detonated explosives on two passenger planes they had boarded at Moscow's most modern airport, downing the planes and killing 90. On Aug. 31, a woman blew herself up outside a busy Moscow metro station, killing eight others.
But all of that was mere prelude to the school siege, which Russians would come to call their 9/11. President Vladimir Putin went on television Saturday and pledged to strengthen his security services and mobilize the nation against the "total, cruel, full-scale war" being waged on Russia by "international terrorism."
Back to the Drawing Board [May 24, 2004]
After the assassination of Moscow's man in Grozny, Putin must devise a new exit strategy for Chechnya
No Way Out [Oct. 09, 2003]
After the election in Chechnya, Putin wants to declare victory and get out.
Profits of Doom [Oct. 09, 2003]
A Russian special ops commander says the Chechen war is really being fought for oil, arms and money
Awfully Familiar [July 21, 2003]
The war in Chechnya — now sending suicide bombers to Moscow — is becoming Russia's version of Palestine
No End In Sight [Jun. 30, 2003]
The war in Chechnya helped Putin win the Russian presidency. With a wave of new suicide bombings, could it now become his downfall?
Living on a Powder Keg [Feb. 07, 2003]
The forgotten link between Chechen terrorism and the war in Chechnya
Mogadishu at 60 Miles an Hour Arms merchants are once again doing brisk business after a rapid change of power in this tough town, but so far the peace has held
The Year of The Nuke A rundown of the world's nuclear powerhouses, and what to expect in the coming months
