besieged school in southern Russia after a fire fight began between Russian troops storming the complex and Chechen militants, an Independent Television (ITV) journalist said reporting from inside the building.
"Our camera man saw about one hundred bodies on the smoldering ground of the gymnasium," said ITV journalist Julian Manyon in a telephone interview. His live report with the British broadcaster was often interrupted by a hail of gunfire and the roar of explosions. "Russian forces are still fighting pocket of resistance," he added, in a clear sign that the military operation was less successful than previously believed.
Many children were believed to be among the dead in the school of Beslan, a town of 30,000 in Russia’s North Ossetia republic. Earlier reports said that at least 5 militants linked to rebels from neighboring Chechnya were killed while at least 13 of them escaped.
Manyon said the Russian operation was apparently not planned, but that the fire fight began after children somehow managed to escape.
It happened when rescue workers reportedly came to pick up dead bodies of victims of a previous fire fight.
The Chechen rebels apparently decided to "fire at the (escaping) children", prompting the Russian response, Manyon said.
MANY INJURED
There were also hundreds of injured people, and Manyon said at least one news cameraman was hit by gunfire. Television footage showed earlier how blood covered children assisted by parents and other hostages were running for their lives from the school complex.
Some areas were covered in smoke. While Russian forces tried to secure the building, fighting continued nearby, several news reports suggested.
The bloody aftermath raised new questions about the Kremlin’s policy toward Chechen rebels. Parents had urged security forces to negotiate with the militants, who demanded a Russian withdrawal from Chechnya.
NO NEGOTIATIONS
However Russian President Vladimir Putin had made clear he would "not negotiate with terrorists," although he had ruled out "for now" the use of force against the hostage takers. Up to 400 hostages were believed to be in the building when at least 18 militants, some of them wearing suicide belts with explosives, took over the school on Wednesday, September one.
Russian Ministries, a Christian mission organization working with the school, soon revealed that there were at least two staff members and "dozens of Russian Christian children" among the hostages. It added to fear among Christians in the region, as the Kremlin has suggested that rebels in Chechnya have close ties to anti Christian groups and Muslim terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda lead by fugitive Osama bin Laden. However rebel leaders initially denied any involvement in the school siege.
The siege of the school came shortly after 10 people died when a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a metro station in Moscow and a week after 90 people died when two planes exploded almost simultaneously in suicide attacks.
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