I haven't seen anything about this on the forums. I may have missed the threads about it somehow, but I didn't think I saw any. I apologize to those of you who think this is too soon, and that such a thread should not be up. I mean no offence, I merely wish to know what people know and think of what went down and how it happened.

Here is how I have heard it went down.

The attackers had crammed all the hostages, or atleast 1000 of them, into the middle of a gym. They laid mines and other explosive devices on the ground around them, and possibly in the group itself aswell. They placed 2 large explosive devices in the basketball hoops, hung them from the ceiling, and used bombs secured by some sort of adhesive on to the walls inside. At some point, one of the wallbombs apparently fell from the wall, exploding. A short while later another explosion followed, collapsing the roof. As hostages began to flee the attackers opened fire. This prompted the Russian forces to return fire and advance. Possibly they assumed they were either being shot at themselves or that the attackers were killing the hostages anyways. As the Russian special forces advanced, spectators, mainly relatives, surged forward aswell searching for relatives. In the chaos, some of the attackers escaped and fled.

The battle in the school and around it seems to have lasted quite a while, several hours infact. This is where I start to get some questions.
The main ones are:

How could the battle have taken this long? From what I have heard, the school was about as big as an old highschool we have around here, and I could not see it taking more than a half hour to clear that thing, tops.

What type of training did the Russian SF's have in this type (anti-terror/hostage response/counter-insurgency?) event?

And what type of equipment was the response force equipped with? Not just specifics like what type of firearms or ammo, but also how good was their support (ie. Fiber-optics- did they have them, how extensively? Did they know how to use them?)

Are they as well equipped or trained as their western counterparts for these events?

If not, how do they compare?

Sorry if the title doesn't isn't all inclusive for this.

Well there are like 50 different stories, and since we weren't there we probably won't know the exact truth, but check out BBC news BBC.com is the website i think, try CNN, and umm hopefully some other people can give you some other international news websites, if you know any people from Russia you could give them a call too.

yeh, i checked out bbc, thats where i get most my info from since i think they're mostly unbiased, and their based on another continent which adds a layer of isolation from mainstream view here, but back on topic, thanx, i'll go chek out CNN and some others if i can. I don't know anyone in Russia (donno if I should be thankful or disappointed) but I know a lot of people from Russia, so they might.

Feel free to post what you've heard happened I guess then, since the entire truth of what exactly happened probably won't be known for a while.
Should sorta make this all about the Belsan military portion for those of you who DON'T read watch or hear anything at all.... :P

People need to stop blaming Putin's policies and look to the people who made this whole tragedy what It was, Islamic terrorists. This was a very confusing situation and not all the details are known. Be carful when putting blame On the military forces involved.

WHEN THE KILLERS COME FOR THE KIDS
By Ralph Peters
NY Post

September 4, 2004 -- THE mass murder of children revolts the human psyche. Herod sending his henchmen to massacre the infants of Bethlehem haunts the Gospels. Nothing in our time was crueler than what the Germans did to children during the Holocaust. Slaughtering the innocents violates a universal human taboo.

Or a nearly universal one. Those Muslims who preach Jihad against the West decided years ago that killing Jewish or Christian children is not only acceptable, but pleasing to their god when done by "martyrs."

It isn't politically correct to say this, of course. We're supposed to pretend that Islam is a "religion of peace." All right, then: It's time for Muslims to stand up for the once-noble, nearly lost traditions of their faith and condemn what Arab and Chechen terrorists and blasphemers did in the Russian town of Beslan.

If Muslim religious leaders around the world will not publicly condemn the taking of children as hostages and their subsequent slaughter — if those "men of faith" will not issue a condemnation without reservations or caveats — then no one need pretend any longer that all religions are equally sound and moral.

Islam has been a great and humane faith in the past. Now far too many of its adherents condone, actively or passively, the mass murder of school kids. Instead of condemnations of the Muslim "Jihadis" responsible for butchering more than 200 women and children in cold blood, we will hear spiteful counter-accusations about imaginary atrocities supposedly committed by Western militaries.

Well, the cold fact is that Western soldiers, whether Americans, Brits, Russians or Israelis, do not take hundreds of children hostage, then shoot them in cold blood while detonating bombs in their midst. The Muslim world can lie to itself, but we need lie no longer.

The tragedy in southern Russia occurred thousands of miles from the United States, but, in essence, that massacre happened next door. The parents, teachers and students kept for days without water or food in a sweltering school building before being butchered were our children, our sisters, our wives, our parents.

The mass hostage situation wasn't about Chechen rebels (and at least 10 Arabs) opposing the Russian government. It was a continuation of the universal struggle between good and evil. And there is no doubt which side is evil, scorned though the word may be by our own elite.

How can any human being with a shred of conscience dismiss what occurred in that school as anything less than evil?

The attack in Beslan wasn't about Russia's brutal incompetence in Chechnya — as counter-productive as Moscow's grim heavy-handedness may have been. It was about religious bigotry so profound that the believer can hold a gun to a child's head, pull the trigger and term the act "divine justice."

We will hear complaints that the Russian special forces should have waited — even after the terrorists began shooting children. Negotiations are the heroin of Westerners addicted to self-delusion. Who among us would have waited when he or she saw fleeing children cut down by automatic weapons? The urge to protect children is as primal as any impulse we ever feel.

Make no mistake: No blame attaches to the Russians for the massacre at that school. The guilt is entirely upon the Islamic extremists who have led the religion they claim to cherish into the realms of nightmare.

There will be repercussions. Having suffered the hijacking and destruction of two passenger jets, a deadly bombing at a Moscow subway station and a massacre in a primary school all in less than two weeks, the Kremlin will have learned to rue the day it imagined that there was anything to gain by opposing American efforts against terrorists, whether Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein.

As they inevitably do, the terrorists reminded the world of their heartless barbarism. Even if France manages to beg the release of its kidnapped journalists in Iraq, it has begun to sense its vulnerability. And all Europeans with a vestige of sense will recognize that the school seizure in Russia could easily repeat itself in Languedoc or Umbria, Bavaria or Kent.

An attack on children is an attack on all of humanity.

No matter what differences Western states discover to divide them, the terrorists will bring us together in the end. Their atrocities expose all wishful thinking for what it is.

A final thought: Did any of those protesters who came to Manhattan to denounce our liberation of 50 million Muslims stay an extra day to protest the massacre in Russia? Of course not.

The protesters no more care for dead Russian children than they care for dead Kurds or for the hundreds of thousands of Arabs that Saddam Hussein executed. Or for the ongoing Arab-Muslim slaughter of blacks in Sudan. Nothing's a crime to those protesters unless the deed was committed by America.

The butchery in Russia was a crime against humanity. In every respect. Was any war ever more necessary or just than the War on Terror?

And what will terror's apologists say when the killers come for their own children?

Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."

Shouldn't we blaim Terrorists instead of saying islamit terrorists. It kind of gives Islam a bad name

I do not blame Putin nor the special forces. The type of people the Russian's were up against weren't you're average bank robber, and I sincerely doubt they had and dellusions about getting out of this one clean. They were trained, equipped, organized, and willing to die. I doubt the best of the best of the special forces in our world could have pulled off a rescue from this situation 100% clean.

Shouldn't we blaim Terrorists instead of saying islamit terrorists. It kind of gives Islam a bad name

Yes it does, it gives all religion a bad name, but the simple fact is, right now, Islamic terrorism has taken over as the dominite form of terrorism In the world. Read the article

The Russians are very new to the scene when it comes to the art of securing the release of terrorists especially since before the fall of communism in their country it was pretty much a case of sod the terrorists sod the victims lets go in all guns blazing and hope for the best now with the international media keeping tabs on anything like this happening it cuts that response out of the loop.
Now one of the problems the Russians faced (besides the obvious fundamentalist, suicidal attitude of the aggressors) was crowd control!!
Most of the people standing around in DIRECT LINE OF SIGHT of the target were parents of children trapped in the school. Understandable as a parent I would do the same in their shoes. But unlike their western counterparts these parents are by the large ex conscripts from the army and still have serviceable weapons in their cuboards and as soon as they saw their children in harms way, they rushed home and got said weapons.
When things started happening and shots were fired these parents returned fire, leaving the military no other option but to join in.
Now the first thing that should of happened as soon as Russian forces started arriving was a cordon should of been made in the UK no reporter, family member or fully armed person without the correct ID ie military, police or medic would of been allowed inside that cordon if this had happened a lot more lives could of been saved possibly.

Also did anyone notice as soon as it was reported that there were a couple of Arab mercenaries in the group of hostage takers, that was all that was focused on?? Just a thought

Jay

Edited: Until you have the credentials and experience to comment, I would suggest you leave the "who's better" comments out of your discussion. If you have questions, read the forum rules.

Yea, they forgot to mention the 200 or so dead kids... (sarcasm)

Look I know it was a terrible tragedy about the dead children and yes a lot of the news was focused on the victims of this tragedy.
My words were taken out of context, what I meant was when it came to the aggressors the majority of the focus was on the Arab mercenary connection.
Jay