First, the scene situation
1 September 2004 at about 9.30 a.m
35 Chechen separatist terrorists drove vans into the First Secondary School in Beslan, Republic of Ossetia, southern Russia, abducted more than 1,200 teachers, students and parents who were in the process of opening the school and drove them to the school gymnasium as hostages.
1. Hostility
Well equipped and well trained
The kidnapping was planned by Basayev, the leader of the illegal armed forces in Chechnya, directly carried out by the field commander Mohammed Yevloyev, and received financial and personnel support from international terrorist forces.
The terrorists demanded that Russia withdraw its troops from Chechnya, stop the war in Chechnya, propose direct dialogue with the Presidents of North Ossetia and the Republic of Ingushetia, and release the 24 "combatants" arrested during the June 21-22 terrorist attacks in Ingushetia that year, or else all hostages would be killed.
There are 35 terrorists, dressed in NATO-style camouflage uniforms, equipped with automatic rifles, grenades, light machine guns, sniper rifles and other weapons.
According to the post-mortem investigation, many of them were mercenaries in the Arab region.
Basayev claimed that a total of 35 terrorists were involved in the incident, but because the Russian government finally confirmed that only 32 terrorists were killed and captured, the number of terrorists officially recognized was 32.
Two of them were young women wearing bomb vests.
With 2 anti-chemical dogs to deal with Russian chemical attacks.
Andreyev, head of the Security Service of Russia's Republic of North Ossetia, who handled the hostage crisis, acknowledged that the militants were well-equipped, well-trained and had very strong combat effectiveness.
He revealed in an interview:
"The ongoing fighting and the explosive devices, ammunition, mines, etc. found at the site of the incident show that the militants made meticulous preparations for this operation."
In July 2004, terrorists took advantage of the school's summer renovations to disguise themselves as construction workers and smuggled weapons, such as bombs, mines and bazookas, into the school, under the floor of the gymnasium and in other hidden locations.
Later, as confirmed by the hostages, the kidnappers took the weapons and ammunition from the basement after occupying the school.
Highly specialized
Carrying gas masks and a large number of supplies, the terrorists closed all doors and windows as soon as they entered the stadium and confiscated all the hostages' communication facilities.
Terrorists have always refused to send water, food, medicine and other necessities of life.
For the negotiators, in order to avoid the Russian special forces disguised as negotiators, the terrorists only allow non-professional celebrities who have found out the details in advance and cannot be transferred to enter the school.
1 September at 11:30 a.m
The terrorists asked a hostage to go out with a note and hand it over to the Russian government, which read:
"We call for negotiations with President Zasokhov of the Republic of North Ossetia, President Of the Republic of Ingushetia, Mr. Jazikov, pediatrician Rosali and Adviser to the President of Russia Aslakhanov."
Terrorist insider situation
On the afternoon of September 1, there was a debate within the terrorists.
Two women in self-detonating vests protested to the terrorist leader and expressed their dissatisfaction with the abduction of children.
In its report, the Russian news agency quoted the testimony of kulayev, a hostage at the time:
"At that time, some armed hijackers shouted: 'The police station is nearby, let's go and occupy it, why are we occupying the school?' ”
Kulayev said,
"Two female 'human bombs' openly quarreled with the 'colonel' and did not agree to the abduction of the children, and as a result the 'colonel' detonated a bomb on them and killed them."
At 4 p.m., the terrorist leader detonated a bomb on a woman, killing 5-6 male hostages.
2. Hostages
In the early days of the hostage-taking, about 50 hostages hiding throughout the school ran out of the school.
The hostages were killed
One male hostage pulled out a pistol to resist, killing one terrorist, but was quickly killed.
A male hostage stood up and translated what the terrorists said into Ossetian, but was killed by the terrorists for speaking without permission.
After taking control of the situation, the terrorists sent 15 male hostages out to work, erected obstacles, and were subsequently shot and thrown out of the window.
The reason for the shooting of the hostages, according to previous media reports, was due to terrorists listening to the radio and expressing dissatisfaction with official reports.
Zugayev, a spokesman for the Government of North Ossetia, told the media five hours after the crisis that the number of hostages on campus was 354, while the number of hostages actually held was four times that number.
The news was heard on the radio by terrorists, and the leader, Kuchubanov, immediately shot and killed 15 adult male hostages.
Chubanov declared:
"The Russians say we only kidnapped 354 people, so we'll kill that number."
Later negotiator, former President Lusland of Ingushetia, who was taken by terrorists to see the hostages who were killed, recalled:
"They took me upstairs and showed me about twenty bodies thrown out the window.
Hostage situation
It was hot, with temperatures in North Ossetia above 30 degrees, and many children stripped naked because of the heat.
After terrorists heard the radio that lied about the number, in addition to shooting and killing 15 hostages, they also began to ban the granting of drinking water and food to the hostages.
On September 3, the third day of the incident, some students began drinking urine to survive because of thirst and lack of water, and at least two of their children were on the verge of death.
3. Obstacles and explosives
After the terrorists drove the hostages to the stadium, they planted explosives everywhere.
Explosives come in both pressurized explosives and loose-haired explosives, and part of the loose-haired explosives is that the terrorists themselves step on the switch and explode when they are released.
Barriers and small mines were laid at the door.
At 15:45 on September 1, a female hostage walked out with a videotape and handed it to the government, which contained footage of the hostages.
Many explosives could be seen being placed in various horned deer, only a few meters away from the hostages.
4. Location and terrain
Beslan is a small town with a population of only 35,000, hundreds of kilometers from Chechnya.
Beslan No.1 Middle School is located on a hillside, and to make a hole under the school is equivalent to punching a mountain tunnel, which cannot be done in a short period of time.
The gymnasium for the hostages is located in the center of the school, surrounded by teaching buildings on three sides and surrounded by open spaces and walls.
The stadium is a small, less than 300 square meters, a two-storey multi-window building with no blind spots, and a dense mix of hostages and terrorists.
In order to prevent the repetition of the same tactic of the hostage incident at the Moscow Theater, the terrorists smashed all the windows by using poison gas attacks.
All external windows have the hostage's body as a meat shield.
The roof of the stadium was sloping, helicopters could not land, and terrorists planted explosives on the roof and basketball hoops.
The Alpha and Signal Flag special forces, which were tasked with the main offensive task, had not yet mastered a topographic map of the school's internal buildings when the attack was launched.
5.Company Sentiment
The inhabitants of North Ossetia are predominantly Russian, Georgian and Ossetian.
Secondary schools are close to police stations and the Caucasus is popular, with adult men mostly using weapons and guns widely available at home.
Many of the students' hostage parents had served in the Russian army and even special operations units, and some of the grandparents' parents had even fought with the Germans in World War II, and there was Mosin Nagant at home at that time, and the people as a whole were more effective.
After the hostage incident, many armed parents spontaneously rushed to the area where the incident occurred, and in order to distinguish between the enemy and the enemy, they tied white cloth strips on their arms.
2. Operational deployment
1. Emergency response
Armed parents
After the incident, the first to arrive at the scene were not the Russian army and police, but the armed parents of the abducted students.
Carrying weapons from their homes, they arrived at the school for the first time and engaged in a brief exchange of fire with the terrorists.
An hour and a half later, military police arrived at the scene.
After the police arrived, the armed parents began to cooperate very actively, seizing the commanding heights, and some parents and police officers tried to enter the campus.
The main achievement of this early operation was to rescue some of the hostages trapped in the boiler room and not detected by the terrorists from the school.
Several hostages were shot during the evacuation, but overall some success was achieved.
Regular troops arrived
September 1, 10 points 30 minutes
An emergency command center headed by the Federal General Directorate of Security was set up at the site, the Russian military and police quickly surrounded the school, and several motorbus companies of the 19th Motor Rifle Division of the 58th Army of the Russian Army in North Austria participated in the blockade of the school.
Special forces such as the "Alpha" and "Signal Flags" under the General Security Service of the Russian Federation and the Ministry of Internal Affairs also arrived the next day.
BTR-80 armored vehicles equipped with 14.5 mm large-caliber machine guns, T-72 main battle tanks, and Hind gunships gradually arrived in place near the scene.
The sniper is in place.
Federal Agent
After receiving the news, Putin first issued an order: to dispatch officials from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and Security Service agents to Quickly rush to Beslan to control the situation.
At the emergency meeting that followed, Putin established the basic policy of "ensuring the safety of hostages, negotiations and armed preparations", "political settlement is the first choice, ready to make the necessary compromises; do not launch a strong offensive until the last resort".
Without his own orders, gunshots were not allowed to be heard at the scene and the hostages were kept safe.
2. Vigilance and sealing
Although Putin stressed the need to control the situation on the scene and not allow the militia to attack privately, in fact, the peripheral sealing task of the scene is a mess.
Chechen expert Marashenko said in an interview: "The attack is unplanned and even begins in a passive situation. ”
He stressed that there was no proper cordon around the perimeter of the school, which was a manifestation of "lack of organization".
When the decisive explosion on September 3 occurred and the crisis escalated, the Russian Internal Guard forces in charge of the perimeter guard failed to effectively control the crowd, and a large number of armed parents entered the core area of the scene.
When the special forces launched a strong attack, armed parents even rushed into the school earlier and exchanged fire with terrorists.
On the one hand, the line of sight of Russian snipers was blocked.
On the other hand, because the robbers and special forces were wearing jungle camouflage uniforms, many special operators were hit by the fire of the parents of the students in the rear, resulting in the enemy in the abdomen and back, resulting in casualties.
"When the explosion suddenly happened and the children started fleeing from inside, we called the kidnappers and asked them to stop shooting. They replied: 'We have stopped shooting, it is your people who are firing'. ”
Ruslan Oshev, former president of the Republic of Ingushetia, who had entered the school to negotiate with terrorists during the incident, told the News Times,
"We gave the order for a ceasefire, but there was a third party (who did not listen) and those militias decided to rescue the hostages with their own strength"
3. Combat readiness
Armament
T-72 tanks, BTR-80 armored vehicles and Hind Gunships were ready for battle.
Some soldiers arrived at the combat position with individual rocket launchers and flamethrowers on their backs.
For the entry of these heavy weapons into the scene, some Russian journalists used the term "encirclement and annihilation" to describe this rescue.
However, due to the overall strategic emphasis on negotiation, the combat readiness of the ground troops has been greatly relaxed.
Many Alpha and Signal Flag Special Forces were not fully prepared for attack, and many were not wearing bulletproof vests.
Action plan
According to the situation at the scene, on the evening of September 2, the Russian command post had drawn up a battle plan.
Use the cover of darkness to cut off the power supply, and then use helicopters to approach, lower the special combatants to the roof, blast open the ceiling, and attack and eliminate the terrorists.
3. Raids
1. Passive unfolding
The operation was never carried out as planned.
When the assault order was given, the special forces also did not receive a pre-preparation order for a strong attack.
September 3 at 13:05 p.m
Suddenly, several gunshots rang out, and an explosion occurred almost at the same time on campus.
22 seconds later, a more violent explosion occurred, and a large number of hostages began to flee outwards, and terrorists opened fire on the fleeing hostages.
At this time, the armed parents on the periphery saw the fleeing children and began to break through the cordon and push towards the core area, and the scene was chaotic and uncontrollable.
13:15
Special forces launched a strong attack.
2. Two explosions
According to official Russian reports at the time, the two explosions were due to a mistake by terrorists, who accidentally triggered the fuse, and the bomb hanging on the basketball rack in the stadium suddenly exploded, causing the roof to partially collapse.
And directly led to the chaos on the scene and the passive attack of the follow-up special forces.
However, the true cause of the explosion is still controversial.
On the "Beslan Truth" website, an independent investigative report by Yuri Saviliev, a Russian parliamentarian and member of the Beslan Investigation Commission, "Beslan: The Truth Told by the Hostages" was published.
Saviliev, a high-level Russian expert in explosive identification, has professionally analyzed the attack on the Beslan stadium.
He mentioned in the report that the two explosions at the Beslan Stadium on the afternoon of September 3 were not detonated by terrorists, but by the rocket launching of rockets by Russian troops in a five-story building opposite the stadium.
According to the description of Saviliev's report, at 13:03 p.m. on the same day, Russian special forces used individual grenade launchers or other similar equipment to attack the gymnasium on the roof of the five-story building at No. 37 northeast of the stadium, causing the ceiling of the eastern part of the gymnasium to collapse.
After 22 seconds, rockets or mortar shells were fired again from Building 41, not far from the stadium, causing a hole of about 1 square meter in the roof of the stadium.
After the two explosions, the roof of the stadium caught fire, falling down and injuring many hostages and causing a fire, many of which were either smashed to death or burned alive.
3. Assault on the gymnasium
At the time of the two explosions, armed parents were the first to storm the school, using weapons to cover the fleeing hostages.
Then the "Alpha" and "Signal Flag" special forces attacked, but due to the haste of the operation, many of the team members rushed up before they put on bulletproof vests.
Russian snipers killed 2 terrorists who controlled the fuze of the bomb.
In addition to armed parents and special forces, tanks and helicopter gunships participated in the fighting.
According to Saviliev's report, during the assault, Russian troops repeatedly attacked the gymnasium with rockets and mortars while there were still hostages in the school, and strafed the school with tanks and helicopters.
According to the book "The Secrets of Beslan" published in Russia:
"After the hijacking, in fact, 7 T32 tanks and several flamethrowers slammed into the school gymnasium, causing the gymnasium to catch fire, and forensic doctors found serious burns on many of them when examining more than 200 bodies afterwards."
The BTR-80 armored vehicle drove to the west side of the stadium, continuously firing fire at the attacking terrorists in the process.
Under the cover of armored vehicles, special forces occupied the gymnasium and rescued some of the hostages in the bathhouse.
4. Assault on the canteen
The terrorists fought and retreated, taking some of the hostages through the corridors and resisting in the cafeteria.
They ordered the hostages to stand in front of the windows and doorways and hide in the corner to shoot at the assault troops.
A hostage named "Ida" recalled in an interview:
"I was forced to hold a strange child and stand in front of the window for at least twenty minutes, as a human shield. Bullets were flying, and the two of us miraculously didn't get shot.
······
When I was terrified, there was a sudden explosion. I felt the sky spinning and fell down. At this time, the house was in a mess, and the people were either injured, hidden, or dead.
I had no idea what was going on, only to find out later that the explosion came from a T-72 tank. The tank fired at the canteen, smashing the terrorists and hostages to pieces. ”
Another hostage, Alita Sabavnova, recalled:
"The army came in and fired a round of strafing, bent on eliminating the terrorists."
Three special forces soldiers climbed into the corner window and engaged in a firefight with the terrorists, during which one of the terrorists threw grenades and killed one special forces soldier and several hostages.
5. Control and rescue
3 September at 16:00
The Russian army largely controls the school, but still faces sporadic resistance.
Most of the hostages have escaped from the campus, and rescue efforts have begun.
Dozens of ambulances and thousands of stretchers were put into use around the site, and more than 700 people were taken to four hospitals in beslan and Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia.
Fourth, the results of the action
"It's a total tragedy."
Independent military expert Pavel Fergenhauer said in an interview with Agence France-Presse,
"In the 12-hour shootout, only one in ten hostages was rescued, the rest were either killed or wounded, and the special forces suffered heavy casualties ... Once again, our security forces are in disarray. ”
In December 2005, Russian prosecutors investigating the tragedy issued a report saying that authorities had made no mistakes in handling the incident.
In December 2006, the Russian Parliament, which is responsible for the investigation of the hostage incident in Beslan, released an official investigation report pointing out that there are serious problems and deficiencies in the process of preventing terrorist attacks and relieving hostages in Russia.
terrorist
The terrorists killed 31, 1 captured and 3 fled.
hostage
More than 1,200 people were taken hostage, resulting in the deaths of 333 hostages, including 186 minors, 958 injured, including 639 minors, 123 disabled, 26 children's parents killed, 31 terrorists killed and 1 captured alive.
Rescuers
A total of 12 people were killed and 18 wounded in both special forces units.
Of these, "Alpha" killed 5 people, including a major, and "Signal Flag" killed 7 people, including a colonel and a lieutenant colonel.