As the death toll in the siege of Beslan’s School Number One climbed to 330 — 156 of them children — President Vladimir Putin warned on Saturday that terrorists had declared ‘a full-scale war’ on Russia. Officials said all 35 hostage-takers were also dead as doctors struggled to cope with more than 600 injured children and adults.
In a grim televised address Putin pledged an unremitting crackdown on terrorists and their sympathisers; but said his country’s security forces had to bear responsibility for allowing the kidnappers to launch their devastating attack.
Putin said he would attack terrorism across the North Caucasus and called on Russia’s security forces to fight more effectively against the threat. He said that following the collapse of the Soviet Union the nation had been weakened and unable to respond as effectively as it must.
In an aside aimed at the widespread outrage in Russia at the bungled and apparently unplanned assault to free the hostages, which may have contributed to the large number of deaths, Putin said: ‘It is vital to create an effective crisis management system, including fundamentally new approaches in the activity of the security forces.
‘In general, we need to admit that we did not show an understanding of the complexities and dangers of the processes occurring in our own country and in the world. In any case, we could not adequately react … We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten.’
He noted that Russia’s borders had become porous and ‘unprotected’ and that corruption had pervaded the law enforcement agencies.
Putin also called for a mobilisation of the nation before what he called the ‘common danger’ of terrorism. He said measures would be taken to strengthen Russia’s territorial integrity, create a more effective crisis management system and overhaul the law enforcement structures.
‘We stopped giving enough attention to questions of defence and security, and allowed corruption to infect our judicial and law enforcement sphere,’ he said.
‘Moreover, our country — which used to have the strongest defence system of its external borders — became unprotected from either the west or the east’ he added.
Putin said some enemies wanted to tear off parts of Russia, and others were helping them. ‘They help, supposing that Russia, as one of the greatest nuclear powers, still poses a threat to them, so they have to get rid of that threat.’
His comments came after he made a lightning pre-dawn visit to Beslan, where he said he had ordered the region’s administrative borders to be closed while authorities searched for the attackers’ accomplices. Later he decreed that Russia would observe two days of mourning on Monday and Tuesday. ‘I ask you to remember those who died at the hands of terrorists in recent days,’ he said in his address.
He looked and sounded as grim as the events warranted and by blaming the security forces for a lack of professionalism, he voiced an opinion many Russians share. He also appealed to middle-aged and older Russians by talking sympathetically of the collapse of the Soviet Union as something that had undermined people’s security. His stern and serious broadcast last night will have satisfied many Russians, at least in its tone and some of its content.
Eyewitness accounts from inside the gym, where most of the 1 000 or so hostages were held, appear to contradict earlier claims by Russian authorities that nine or 10 Arab fighters were among the terrorists. Instead, survivors said most spoke with Ingush, Chechen or Russian accents, largely communicating in Russian.
Only one of them was described as having darker skin that could have marked him out as a foreign fighter. The behaviour of the terrorists towards the hostages as explosions ripped through the gym, triggering the Russian assault, also appears complex, with some witnesses describing how fleeing gunmen shot hostages, while others said one gunmen, called ‘Hassan’, helped hostages as the fire caught hold.
Meanwhile, the international community continued to express its horror and sympathy over the outcome.
At the Vatican, the Pope condemned the attack as a ‘vile and ruthless aggression on defenceless children and families’, and offered his ‘heartfelt affection to the Russian people in this hour of dismay and anguish’.
The Archbishop of Canterbury revealed that even his faith had been tested by the depth of the horror. ‘It is probably the suffering of children that most deeply challenges anybody’s personal faith,’ he told Radio 4’s Today programme.
‘When you see the depth of energy that people can put into such evil, then of course, yes, there is a flicker, there is a doubt. It would be inhumane, I think, not to react that way.’
He quoted the Bible in which Jesus said it would be better for people who committed offences against children to have millstones put around their necks and cast in the sea. He noted the Koran said God did not love those who overstepped the limits. ‘They were performing deeply evil acts, perhaps the most evil kind that we can imagine.’ – Guardian Unlimited Â