Attackers wearing suicide-bomb belts seized a school in a Russian region bordering Chechnya on Wednesday and were holding hundreds of hostages, including 200 children. The assault came a day after a suicide bomber killed 10 people in Moscow.
[Another subway bomb, like Madrid. Heads up, New Yorkers!--Jen]
The seizure began after a ceremony marking the first day of the Russian school year, reports said, when it was likely that many parents had accompanied their children to class. The attackers warned they would blow up the school if police tried to storm it and forced children to stand at the windows, said Alexei Polyansky, a police spokesman for southern Russia.
Both the school attack and the Moscow bombing appeared to be the work of Chechen rebels or their sympathizers, but there was no evidence of any direct link. The two strikes came just a week after two Russian planes carrying 90 people crashed almost simultaneously in what officials also say were terrorist bombings.
[The "Black Widows" of Chechnya claimed responsibility and this is the same group that took part in the Moscow theater siege of Fall 2002.]
"In essence, war has been declared on us, where the enemy is unseen and there is no front," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said, according to the Interfax-Military News Agency. He spoke before the seizure.
[Sounds only too familiar, doesn't it?--J.T.]
The latest violence also appears to be timed around Sunday's presidential elections in Chechnya, a Kremlin-backed move aimed at undermining support for the insurgents by establishing a modicum of civil order in the war-shattered republic. The previous Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed along with more than 20 others in a bombing on May 9.
[...]
The attackers demanded talks with regional officials and a well-known pediatrician, Leonid Roshal, who had aided hostages during the seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002, news reports said.
[Told you there was a connection!]
[...]
A militant Muslim web site published a statement claiming responsibility for the bombing on behalf of the "Islambouli Brigades," a group that also claimed responsibility for the airliner crashes. The veracity of the statements could not immediately be confirmed.
The statement said Tuesday's bombing was a blow against Putin, "who slaughtered Muslims time and again." Putin has refused to negotiate with rebels in predominantly Muslim Chechnya who have fought Russian forces for most of the past decade, saying they must be wiped out.
[...]
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov told reporters near the Rizhskaya subway stop in northern Moscow that the female bomber was walking toward the station but saw two police officers stationed there, turned around "and decided to destroy herself in a crowd of people."
The blast tore through a heavily trafficked area between the subway station and a nearby department store. Doctors worked through the night to save the lives of others who were severely wounded by the bomb that officials said was packed with bolts to maximize casualties.
This, of course, is killer "technology" that the Chechen jihadis have picked up from their Paleostinian "brothers" in arms.
Revolting.
My prayers are with the parents, teachers and children trapped with these murderers in the school and with the victims' families and loved ones from the plane explosions last week and the subway bombing yesterday.
Putin needs to swallow some of his considerable pride that he can "crush the rebels" and put his head together with Bush and Blair, together with the recognition that he is fighting the same enemy in Chechnya that we're fighting in the Middle East and at home.
It won't work for Putin to fight Islamist terrorism only within Russia's borders while supporting, trading with and allying one's country with the state sponsors of IslamoFacisct murder like Saddam's Iraq and the mullahs' Iran.
Putin's contrarian and unsuccessful approach to his plague of Chechen terrorism illustrates the rightness of the Bush Doctrine and the meaningfulness of Monday night's speeches by Rudy, Sen. McCain and actor Ron Silver.
The war is global. The enemy is radical Islam and the Enemy must be defeated, not excused, forgiven, forgotten or treated as "freedom fighters" (which I think is where Putin is making his biggest mistake).
