Five people suspected of involvement in last year’s Beslan school massacre have been killed by Russian authorities while resisting arrest, an official said on Friday.
Four suspects were also said to have been arrested in an operation that targeted some of the alleged organisers of the hostage-taking raid at the school in the town of Beslan, in southern Russia, last September.
Nikolai Shepel, the regional prosecutor leading the Beslan inquiry, would not elaborate on where or when the operation took place but said in a statement that it had targeted those involved in the ”preparation stage” of the atrocity.
At least 32 gunmen raided the school in Beslan and held 1 227 people hostage for nearly three days before the siege ended in gunfire and explosions that killed 330 people, almost half of them children.
Officials said at the time that all the gunmen had been killed, apart from one who was captured, but the Russian media suggested there were more than 32 gunmen and that some of them had escaped.
The Chechen separatist militant Shamil Basayev has claimed responsibility for the school seizure and other attacks in Russia, including two plane bombings in August.
Shepel said on Friday the suspects arrested in the latest raid were also accused of involvement in an attack on police facilities in Russia’s southern region of Ingushetia, near Chechnya, in June last year, in which about 90 people were killed.
He said that Abu Dzeit, a suspected al-Qaeda-linked mercenary from Saudi Arabia, was a key organiser of the school seizure and other terror attacks. Dzeit died in a Russian security sweep last month.
Investigators say the six-month criminal investigation into the Beslan atrocity has provided some answers as to how the raid was organised but there has been anger in Russia at the slow pace of the inquiries.
Russian authorities have been accused of hiding information about the attackers and how they were able to slip into town with a huge quantity of weapons so easily. Five local police officers have been charged with negligence in relation to the tragedy.
Last month Shepel told The Guardian the first explosion at the school had come from within the building and was not caused by some ”outside influence”. Russian forces have been accused of causing the first explosion, leading to the bloody ending to the siege.
Investigators say tests revealed that 21 of the 31 gunmen who died in the storming of the building had heroin or morphine in their bloodstreams. Another six apparently used light drugs ranging from codeine to marijuana.
Shepel said the group was led by Ruslan Khuchbarov, known as ”the colonel”, who he said he had seen on a videotape meeting with Abu Dzeit a few days before the attack. – Guardian Unlimited Â