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Survivor's tale of Breslan seige
The last time Alla Gadiyeva saw her first-grade son and mother — at the violent climax today of Russia's 53-hour hostage saga — she was helping them to escape. She pushed them out of a school window with other hostages, and fell back exhausted. "Then, I was praying," says the young mother, recounting the ordeal from a stretcher outside the city hospital, after her own rescue several hours later. "We were all praying."The most common version of events is that the hostage-takers opened fire on a vehicle sent in to retrieve bodies of those killed at the start of the seizure of Beslan's Middle School No. 1, in southern Russia. Russian authorities said they were forced to storm the building at that point. Almost immediately, says Mrs. Gadiyeva and others, at least one group of children managed to escape while being shot at by their captors. Russian forces battled the hostage-takers for hours as explosions and grenades rocked the city. Russian troops — with special forces spearheading the storming — killed 27 hostage-takers and captured three alive, officials told the Interfax news agency. The end of the siege Friday brought tears of joyful reunion for those with children who were brought out alive. For some others, who did not find their family members' names on the survivor lists, it elicited high-pitched wails of sorrow. "My niece is missing - she's not on any of the [survivor] lists," said one woman, sitting alone on a small stump under a cluster of trees, shoes off and head buried in her hands. When the Russian raid began today, said the woman, "we were frightened. Of course we didn't want [a raid]. Everyone knew how that would end." Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-09-05 |
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