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| Caucasus |
| Terrorists posed as construction workers; got into school in July |
| 2004-09-04 |
| Terrorists who took 1,000 hostages in a school near Chechnya staged a well planned attack after first scouring the area and then disguising themselves as workers rebuilding a gym, officials said yesterday. The head of the North Ossetian security service said that he was certain now that the guerrillas had located their point of attack well in advance and had not simply rushed into the school on Wednesday, the first day of the academic year, on the spur of the moment. "We found a large amount of explosives and mines and their number says that this attack was planned in advance," security chief Valery Andreyev was quoted as saying by Interfax. "The armaments were hidden on the school grounds," he said. He gave no other details but other sources fleshed out the story. One source was quoted as saying the militants first scouted out two other schools before settling on School Number One — the main one in Beslan — because it was undergoing major reconstruction work over the summer. The school needed everything, including a new floor for its gym. The hostage-takers herded their captives into the gym on September 1 and kept them there for three days without food or water, suffocating in overwhelming humidity and heat and surrounded by home-made explosives. "Some of the teachers (who were taken hostage) recognised a few of the rebels because they worked on the school construction project... At at that point they were working on the safes," Ismel Shaov, spokesman for the interior ministry, said. "They brought in a lot of explosives while they were doing their work." One official said the hostage-takers had settled on the building in July. They posed as workers and brought in bombs, mines, rocket launchers and other weapons disguised as building material. "The bandits snuck in a large amount of arms, munitions, missiles and explosives hidden by planks, cement and other construction material," the source said. They then stashed the weapons away in a case in the basement under the new gym floor before it was laid down, Russian news reports quoted security officials as saying. |
| Posted by:TS(vice girl) |
| #1 This answers a thought that kept bothering me. How did these guys have the amount of explosives and gun power they were exhibiting, if they just kinda drove up in a truck and jumped out? What &*&^%^*& to plan this around childern returning to school |
| Posted by: Sherry 2004-09-04 9:23:36 PM |