Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, in a statement issued on Friday, claimed responsibility for the Beslan school siege in which more than 320 hostages were killed, half of them children, according to a Chechen rebel Web site. In the statement, Basayev, Russia's most wanted man, said brigades of the group Riyadus-Salikhin which he heads carried out the Beslan attack as well as bomb attacks that downed two passenger planes and attacks in Moscow, the Web site www.kavkazcenter.com said. "The operation ... in the town of Beslan (was carried out by) the second battalion of martyrs under the command of Colonel Orstkhoyev," said the statement, signed by Basayev under his war name of Abdallah Shamil.
In the statement, Basayev blamed President Vladimir Putin for the tragedy which he said had been brought about by Russian special forces storming the school after two days on September 3 in an operation that had been planned from the beginning. He said the group, who held more than 1,100 people hostage inside the school, had been demanding the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya and, in the absence of this, the resignation of Putin. Basayev said the group had told intermediaries who came to the school that the hostages would be given food and water and the youngest children released if the Russian side began to meet their demands. Putin has ordered a security clampdown throughout the Caucasus region in the aftermath of the Beslan tragedy, but has steadfastly refused to negotiate over Chechen independence with rebel leaders who he says are part of a "terrorist internationale." |