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BESLAN SCHOOL MASSACRE: 186 Russian children killed
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[link to en.wikipedia.org]
The Beslan school hostage crisis of early September 2004 lasted three days and involved the capture of over 1,100 people as hostages (including 777 children), ending with the death of over 380 people. The crisis began when a group of armed Islamic separatist militants, occupied School Number One in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia, an autonomous republic in the North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation......
On the third day of the standoff, Russian security forces entered the building with the use of tanks, incendiary rockets and other heavy weapons. At least 334 hostages were killed as a result of the crisis, including 186 children with a significant number of people injured and reported missing.......
The event led to security and political repercussions in Russia, most notably a series of federal government reforms consolidating power in the Kremlin and strengthening of the powers of the President of Russia.............
Questions about the Russian government's management of the crisis have persisted; including allegations of disinformation and censorship in news media, whether the journalists who were present at Beslan were allowed to freely report on the crisis...... and perceptions that excessive force was used........
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a hurried trip to the Beslan hospital in the early hours of 4 September to see several of the wounded victims in his only visit to Beslan. He was later criticised for not meeting the families of victims.
After returning to Moscow, he ordered a two-day period of national mourning on 6 – 7 September 2004. In his televised speech Putin paraphrased Joseph Stalin saying: "We showed ourselves to be weak. And the weak get beaten."
On the second day of mourning, an estimated 135,000 people joined a government-organised rally against terrorism on the Red Square in Moscow. An estimated 40,000 people gathered in Saint Petersburg's Palace Square.[115]
Increased security measures were introduced to Russian cities. More than 10,000 people without proper documents were detained by Moscow police in a "terrorist hunt".
A 16 September 2004 Levada-Center opinion poll found 58% of Russians supporting stricter counter-terrorism laws and the death penalty for terrorism, while 33% would support banning all Chechens from entering Russian cities.......
Even though in the past Putin had rarely hesitated to blame the Chechen separatists for acts of terrorism, this time he avoided linking the attack with the Second Chechen War. Instead, he blamed the crisis on the "direct intervention of international terrorism".....
Putin appeared to connect the events to the US-led "War on Terrorism", but at the same time accused the West of indulging terrorists.......
Shortly after the crisis, official Russian sources stated that the attackers were part of a supposed international group...that included a number of Arabs with connections to al-Qaeda, and claimed they picked up phone calls in Arabic from the Beslan school to Saudi Arabia and another undisclosed Middle Eastern country......
Critics, including Beslan residents who survived the attack and relatives of the victims, focused on allegations that the storming of the school was ruthless. They cite the use of heavy weapons, such as tanks and Shmel rocket flamethrowers.Their usage was officially confirmed.
The Shmel is a type of thermobaric weapon, described by a source associated with the US military as "just about the most vicious weapon you can imagine – igniting the air, sucking the oxygen out of an enclosed area and creating a massive pressure wave crushing anything unfortunate enough to have lived through the conflagration."
Pavel Felgenhauer has gone further and accused the government of also firing rockets from an Mi-24 attack helicopter, a claim that the authorities deny.
Some human rights activists claim that at least 80% of the hostages were killed by indiscriminate Russian fire. According to Felgenhauer, "It was not a hostage rescue operation... but an army operation aimed at wiping out the terrorists."
David Satter of the Hudson Institute said the incident "presents a chilling portrait of the Russian leadership and its total disregard for human life".
CONCLUSION OF OP:
It was reported in the media that Obama visited Putin on his trip to Burma, Cambodia, etc., after the election in November.
Two national leaders who are now dictators have a lot to say to each other, when they are on the same team.
Rumours have persisted for almost a decade now that the Beslan School Massacre was actually set up by Putin in order to consolidate his power.
The Russian people were traumatized, but with a long history of subservience in their national culture, they reacted much more to Putin's liking, than the American people have reacted totally so far to give Obama just what he wants.
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