Is anyone watching this? The siege in Beslan has turned into a major cluster-fuck. Been switching between the coverage on Sky, BBC and CNN.
Currently 310 hostages wounded, 7 dead; 5 terrorists dead, 13 escaped and either holed up or engaged in running battles with the Russian military.
Amazing footage. Sky have a correspondent in the school grounds, Rachel Amatt, who saw a terrorist brought out of the school gymnasium on a stretcher; if he wasn't dead already, he was by the time the local people (who've completely breached the military cordon in a desperate attempt to locate family members) finished with him. . .
It looks to me like either the Chechens tried to use the attempt to retrieve some dead bodies as their chance to break out - or maybe the special forces tried something. If the latter, Putin is finished.
Posted by Saltah'na (Member # 33) on :
Add 100 dead.
It's hard to try to do the correct thing in this situation. Negotiate and you get pushed around by terrorists. Do not negotiate, and you risk innocent lives.
I just hope that Bush does not fall under the same situation. Not that I see that happening though.
With the fiasco surrounding the Moscow Theater disaster, and the bombings of the two airliners, I believe Putin is finished anyways.
Things do not look good for the world over.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Or for Russia. But not so much for Putin.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
This is not the cluster fuck you're making it out to be: reports say that children broke away as the Rissians were retreving bodies from an earlier shooting and the asshats inside opened fire on the KIDS.
The russian forces really had no choice at that point but to go in and the fact that the terrorists did not manage to blow EVERYONE up is some indicator of success. There were reports of almost 1000 people inside when Russian forces went in so if as few as 20 are dead, it's an amazingly low casualty rate.
Still, any loss of lives (particularly children) is horiffic.
I cant imagine things would have gone any better if it happened in Britan or America: it's a terrible situation.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
Apparently a Russian reporter saw one of the terrorists kicked to death a little while ago while trying to escape.
This one doesn't appear to have been entirely the fault of the Russian forces; their hand was forced. Their major mistake seems to have been not sealing off the area. Apparently the initial reponse of special forces to the hostage escape attempt was hampered by civilians firing at the terrorists.
Posted by Veers (Member # 661) on :
Latest figures say 150 people dead, including children--some of whom were reportedly shot in the back. And it's said the toll could rise.
This attack makes any accusation that Putin is a corrupt authoritarian--while not necessarily untrue--look like a word of praise. These people have bombed airliners, bombed metro stations, and committed this atrocity in the course of a week. Earlier this year, they bombed a subway and attacked a neighboring province, too. They are inhuman.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
Apparently a lot of the locals were tooled up and decided to join in the attack on the hostage-takers. Leaving the Russian special forces - who in the opinions of many ex-SAS pundits are looking less special by the minute - with the impossible task of identifying friend of foe, and likely just shooting them anyway.
500 wounded in hospital, 200 dead (mostly children), 27 terrorists dead, according to the latest count.
Posted by Nim the Plentiful (Member # 205) on :
Jason: "There were reports of almost 1000 people inside when Russian forces went in so if as few as 20 are dead, it's an amazingly low casualty rate."
The latest figure is 338 dead but the people on the scene estimate close to 600, and 200 of them children.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nim the Plentiful: Jason: "There were reports of almost 1000 people inside when Russian forces went in so if as few as 20 are dead, it's an amazingly low casualty rate."
The latest figure is 338 dead but the people on the scene estimate close to 600, and 200 of them children.
I've been out of the news loop for the past few days (we had a hurricane from hell here and I had to evacuate mt apartment for safer ground) but everything I've heard since (all 15 minutes of news before my apartment lost power) is terrible. My post was just the initial numbers CNN had relayed....it seems it's actually worse than I thought.
Posted by Nim the Plentiful (Member # 205) on :
The CNN aren't to blame either, everyone are questioning why the russian government relayed the very low figure of "300 hostages at most" before an escaped hostage spilled the beans to the news crew... They always seem to want to contain information, just like the chinese government lied about the first SARS victims and payed the price tenfold, because of their urge to maintain appearances.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Reports are that the US has already sent $50,000 in aid (the maximum allowed under US law initally) nad a cargo plane of medical equipment (burn beds nad ICU equipment mostly) to help. Amazing that such ahorrific act will just rally more countries against these fuckers.
Al Queida connections are being brought to light regarding the funding for this: looks like some of the terrorists worked construction at the school several months back and may have hid their weapons under floorboards at the school.
quote:"If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like that in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq.
"As long as the Iraqi did not deliberately kill women and children, and they were killed in the crossfire, that would be okay."
Man, it's the ultimate price of living in a free society that we have to put up with fuckers like this spreading hate and condoning violence.
Mabye time for some vigilantie justice... Imagine having to send you children to school in this fucko's neighborhood.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
Not to condone the actions of these... people, but I would argue that's still preferable to there not being any schools to send them to at all, the existing ones having been blown full of holes by Russian tanks.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I think many parents will be considering both home schooling and gun ownership after this.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"Man, it's the ultimate price of living in a free society that we have to put up with fuckers like this spreading hate and condoning violence."
Putting up with them is one thing. The real problem, however, is that the newspapers feel some need to print it. Why would they print every nutty opinion someone has on a subject? What's the point in giving them free publicity? "Some Guy Thinks Terrorists Are Good" is not news.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
If I were a cynical man who suspected the Telegraph of being "a little bit right wing", I would almost suspect them of printing it in order to foster a slight "Muslims = bad" belief in it's readers, thereby increasing their "immigrants = bad" and "asylum = bad" beliefs.
But I'm not that cynical.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
quote:Two researchers argue, in a paper published this month in the journal Global Environmental Change, that following the norms of American journalism, U.S. media have promulgated a bias in the coverage of climate change essentially by giving too much credence to climate skeptics at the expense of the scientific consensus.
Posted by Lee (Member # 393) on :
But what are "the norms of American journalism?"
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
To steal from that aforementioned website: President Bush: "The moon is made out of green cheese." John Kerry: "The moon is made out of rock." Headline: "Views Differ on Lunar Composition."
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
If I were a cynical man, I would suspect that "American journalism" was exhibiting some oxymoronic tendencies these days.
But I'm not cynical at all.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
quote:Originally posted by PsyLiam: If I were a cynical man who suspected the Telegraph of being "a little bit right wing", I would almost suspect them of printing it in order to foster a slight "Muslims = bad" belief in it's readers, thereby increasing their "immigrants = bad" and "asylum = bad" beliefs.
Now come on, let's be serious about this. Would the Telegraph really print pieces subtly designed to foster an anti-Muslim attitude. Of course they wouldn't. They'd just publish articles by Will Cunningham which come straight out and say that Islam is bad.
To be fair to the Telegraph, however, this was in a couple of over papers as well, and the group this guy belongs to have made other controversial (along the lines of we hate westerners and want to kill them) statements in the past.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by TSN:
"Man, it's the ultimate price of living in a free society that we have to put up with fuckers like this spreading hate and condoning violence."
Putting up with them is one thing. The real problem, however, is that the newspapers feel some need to print it. Why would they print every nutty opinion someone has on a subject? What's the point in giving them free publicity? "Some Guy Thinks Terrorists Are Good" is not news.
It's not news, but it sells papers and if theres something lacking from "the war og tereror" it's someone to blame for the attacks. Someone not wearing a mask behind a hostage.