Rewiring

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 444.

The Colonel and two others then mined the school, and one militant was made to stand on a detonator. If he moved his foot the charges would go off. The leading militants kept threatening to kill everyone, saying their only aim was to carry out this act of terrorism, Mr Ustinov said. On Friday, an explosion occurred while the militants were rewiring the explosives "for reasons best known to themselves", he continued. In the ensuing panic many of the hostages tried to flee and the militants opened fire on them. Russian Special Forces then moved into the school to try to save the hostages. It is still unclear whether any of the hostage-takers succeeding in fleeing, along with their victims, as reported at the time. One group, which hid in the school basement, was eliminated in a gunfight with the security forces. The prosecutor-general gave no details about the identities of the hostage-takers, whom he said numbered "around 30" and included two women.

Checkpoint police 'bribed'

However, the Associated Press news agency quoted security officials on Thursday who said that, of 10 who have been identified, six were Chechens and four were Ingush. Other reports said that 12 have been identified, including Vladimir Khodov, a half-North Ossetian half-Ukrainian Muslim, who is thought to be one of the ringleaders. There is now some doubt about the participation of Magomet Yevloyev, an ethnic Ingush field commander with the Chechen rebels, originally thought to be one of the key organisers. And early reports that nine or 10 were Arabs have not been confirmed. On Thursday, the Russky Kuryer newspaper reported that the captured hostage-taker, Nur-Pashi Kulayev, and one other, Mairbek Shaybekkhanov, had been arrested in Chechnya in 2002 and 2003, but freed after payoffs to the police. Surviving hostages have told journalists that the attackers told them how they had bribed their way through police checkpoints to reach Beslan. However, a police spokesman said they had used back roads that had no checkpoints.