Russian President Vladi mir Putin visits a victim of the besieged school at a hospital in Beslan, September 4, 2004. Putin ordered a crackdown in seething southern Russia after a school siege killed at least 250, and warned Chechen sympathisers they would be seen as "accomplices of terrorism". (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

Russian President Vladimir Putin consoles a woman injured in Russian school hostage crisis at a hospital in Beslan, September 4, 2004. (Xinhua/AFP Photo) 

    MOSCOW, Sept. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin paid a surprise visit early Saturday to the southern Russian town of Beslan where commandos stormed a school where militants held hundreds of children hostage.

    Putin arrived at the airport in Beslan and then wen to visit a local hospital where wounded survivors were being treated.

    Putin had ordered North Ossetia's borders to be closed and the city of Beslan to be sealed off, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

    Putin said the Russian security forces did not plan to use force to end a standoff with hostage-takers holding around 1,000 people in a school.

    A total of 250 people have died as a result of the hostage crisis in southern Russia.

    "Among the dead there are children, their parents, school teachers and also members of the armed forces who took part in theliberation of the hostages," the Interfax quoted an official from local crisis unit as saying.

    More bodies may be discovered under the rubble from explosion in the school where the hostages were held, the official added.

    SPECIAL OPERATION SUPPRESS HOSTAGE-TAKING IN RUSSIA

    The Russian special forces put an end Friday evening to a three-day hostage-taking crisis that has claimed lives of at least 250 children and innocent adults in a southern Russian school.

    More than 400 hostages, held by armed militants for over 50 hours since Wednesday in a secondary school in the town of Beslan in North Ossetia, a republic bordering Chechnya in southern Russia,managed to escape with the help of the special forces.

    The Itar-Tass news agency reported earlier that 704 people wereinjured during the standoff between hostage-takers and Russian security forces, while Interfax said 531 remained in hospital by early Saturday morning.

    The republic's Deputy Health Minister Taimuraz Revazov confirmed that 283 children are still in hospital and 92 of them in critical condition.

    Intensive exchanges of gunfire lasted for some 10 hours Friday between Russian troops and the gunmen, killing 27 militants but leaving four others at large, who are being pursued by law enforcement agencies.

    Aslanbek Aslakhanov, an advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said militants claimed that they had initially seized 1,200 people and 70 percent of them were children.

    AUTHORITIES SAY NO USE OF FORCE PLANNED FOR FREEING HOSTAGES

    Authorities confirmed that the special operation launched by Russian troops to save the hostages had not been planned in advance but was an immediate reaction to the gunmen's killing of hostages instead.

    "No military action had been planned. We were ready for holding further talks," Valery Andreyev, regional chief of the Federal Security Service (FSB), said in TV broadcast.

    He added that authorities had reached an agreement with the hostage-takers to let Russian Emergency Situations Ministry staff fetch the bodies of those killed in the school area.

    North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov also said there had been no plan to end the school siege by force.

    Two successive powerful explosions went off about 1:15 p.m. Moscow time (0915 GMT) Friday when workers were trying to collect the corpses and hostages then started to run out of the school building.

    The gunmen opened intense fire at the running adults and children, forcing Russian troops to fire back upon the hostage-takers.

    Russian forces began to storm the school after some 30 childrenand women broke out of the building. Some women fainted and otherswere carried away on stretchers. Many children, only in their underwear, ran out screaming and begged for water.

    Earlier reports said more than 100 bodies had been discovered inside the school's gymnasium where most of the hostages had been held without water and food.

    Interfax said the explosions were set off by the militants inside the building and caused partial collapse of the school's roof.

    CHECHEN REBELS, INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM SAID TO BE BEHIND CRISIS

    The heavily armed militants seized the school Wednesday morning,when children along with their parents and teachers attended a ceremony celebrating the first day of Russia's new school year.

    Dzasokhov said the attackers had demanded that Russian troops withdraw from Chechnya -- the first clear indication of a direct link between the siege of the school and the restive situation in the neighboring Chechnya.

    FSB said Chechnya's notorious warlord Shamil Basayev masterminded the hostage-taking, which was carried out by field commander Magomet Yevloyev.

    Yevloyev is a subordinate of Basayev and in the clan of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, who served as acting president of the rebellious Chechen government from 1996 to 1997, according to Andreyev.

    Information also indicated that one of the Wahhabism ideologists, Abu Omar al-Seif, al-Qaeda's liaison in Chechnya, funded the hostage-taking.

    In addition, among the 27 militants killed in the special operation on Friday, 10 are from Arab countries, the Interfax newsagency reported.

    The hostage-taking tragedy, the latest in a wave of violent attacks over the past 11 days blamed on Chechen rebels, dealt a serious blow to the Kremlin's decade-long effort of bringing breakaway Chechnya back under rein.

    An explosion, triggered by a female suicide bomber near a metrostation Tuesday in northeast Moscow, killed 10 people and injured 37 others.

    The explosion came after Sunday's presidential election in Chechnya, in which the Kremlin-backed Alu Alkhanov won a landslidevictory to replace pro-Moscow Akhmad Kadyrov, who was killed in a terrorist bomb blast on May 9.

    Just five days before the election, two Russian passenger planes crashed almost simultaneously, killing all the 90 people aboard. The crashes aroused fears that terrorist attacks were behind the tragedies.

    Chechnya, a war-torn republic in Russia's Northern Caucasus, won de facto independence in 1996 after the pullout of Russian troops. Federal soldiers returned to the lawless republic in September 1999. Since then, a guerrilla war between Chechen rebelsand federal troops has persisted, occasionally spilling into neighboring regions. Enditem

Russian special forces storm seized school

 
(Photo: Xinhua/AFP) 

    MOSCOW, Sept. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- About 200 chidlren hostages on Friday managed to escape the school when Russian special forces stormed the school seized by gunmen Wednesday morning and hostage-takers tried to flee the school.

    Gunfire and large explosions continued even after the special forces took control of the school.

    Five hostage-takers were killed and Russian special forces werepursuing two female kidnappers, dressed in white, who managed to flee the seiged school towards the south of the town.

    The Interfax news agency said that several hostage-takers who managed to escape the storming of school are in a local residence surrounded by Russian troops.

    It also said that all the hostages have been evacuated from the school gymnasium.

    Russian TV footage show paramedics carrying stretchers entered the school and brought children to amublences.

    Some half-naked children drank heavily from bottles of water after two days without drink.

    Interfax said some of the hostage-takers, believed to number about 40, had tried to break out through crowds of frantic relatives waiting near the school as Russian special forces moved in.

  
(Photo: Xinhua/Reuters)

    It was unclear what had triggered the battle, a few hours after Russia insisted it would not resort to force to free the children,parents and teachers being held hostage for a third day.

    Alexander Dzasokhov, president of the republic of North Ossetia, said the 40 or so masked gunmen were demanding an independent Chechnya, the first clear link between them and the decade-long separatist rebellion in the neighboring Russian republic.

    The Itar-Tass news agency said special forces had blown a hole in a school building to let hostages escape. Witnesses, who stood around 150 meters from the school, saw three armored personnel carriers with heavily armed soldiers on board approaching the school.

    The hostage crisis came after Russia suffered a series of terrorist attacks over the past week.

    An explosion near a metro station Tuesday in northeast Moscow killed 10 people and injured 37 others.

  
(Photo: CCTV)

    The explosion came after Sunday's presidential election in Russia's Chechen republic, in which Kremlin-backed Alu Alkhanov won a landslide victory to replace pro-Moscow Akhmad Kadyrov who was killed in a terrorist bomb blast on May 9.

    Just five days before the election, two Russian passenger planes crashed almost simultaneously, killing all the 90 people aboard. The incidents aroused fears that terrorist attacks were behind the tragedies.

    Traces of explosives were found aboard both planes and investigators suspected that two female Chechen passengers -- eachaboard one aircraft -- might have brought down the planes.

    A group called the "Islambouli Brigades" have claimed responsibility for the twin crashes.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that an al-Qaida link to the crashes of two Russian airliners last week confirms a connection between Chechen rebels and international terrorism.

    Chechnya, a war-torn republic in Russia's Northern Caucasus, won de-facto independence in 1996 after the pullout of Russian troops. Federal soldiers returned to the lawless republic in September 1999. Since then, a guerrilla war between Chechen rebelsand federal troops has persisted, occasionally spilling into neighboring regions.

    Putin also said Wednesday that the government is prepared to hold talks with all forces in Chechnya, except terrorists and separatists.

    "There can be no dialogue with those who wanted to fight and who made war a way of earning money. We shall fight against them, throw them in prisons and destroy them," the Russian president told journalists from leading Turkish media outlets following an interview with a Turkish television company.Enditem

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