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| Terror Networks |
| Islamic bastards kill at least 34 in Dagestan |
| 2002-05-09 |
| A remote-controlled bomb shattered a holiday parade Thursday in a Russian town in Dagestan, killing at least 34 people, including children, elderly veterans and members of a marching band that had just struck up the tune "Victory Day." The Russians killed Khattab last month, but his henchman still remain, as does the native killer, Shamil Basayev. Khattab tried to make Dagestan into his own little Islamic emirate before the Dagestanis and the Russers kicked him out and killed all the Wahabbis they could find. On Thursday, a marine band had just started playing the namesake song of Victory Day, which honors the anniversary of the Allied defeat of the Nazis in World War II. Children ran in front, cheered on by veterans, as the musicians and other servicemen headed to the cemetery in the Caspian Sea port of Kaspiisk for a wreath-laying ceremony. Then the bomb — an anti-personnel mine, packed with metal fragments, according to witnesses — blew up. Streams of blood trickled down the tree-lined road after the blast, which injured about 150. A mangled drum heaped with flowers lay next to a pile of abandoned horns and an empty boot. Seventeen servicemen — most of them musicians — 12 children and five adult bystanders were killed, said the Dagestan department of the Emergency Situations Ministry. The pious men with turbans can certainly be proud of that, can't they? No one claimed responsibility, but regional officials blamed Islamic militants who have organized previous attacks in Dagestan. A 1996 blast in a Kaspiisk building that housed Russian border guards killed 68 people. Officials never determined who was responsible, but many blamed Chechen rebels. Usually one doesn't have to look far... President Putin convened an emergency meeting in the Kremlin and appointed the head of the Federal Security Service to oversee the investigation into what he called a terrorist act. "Today is the dearest holiday for our people. ... Today's act was committed by scum for whom nothing is sacred," he told guests at a Victory Day reception. "We have the right to view (the perpetrators) as we view Nazis, as those whose purpose is to sow terror and kill. "But however difficult the tasks before us today, they will be solved." And we should support him and everyone like him. Next time WaPo squawks about Russian "heavy-handedness," ask 'em about the dead babies at the parade. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |