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Hostages freed after forces storm in Russian school
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-03 19:25

Commandos stormed a school in southern Russia where hundreds of hostages had been held for three days and took control of the building Friday, Russian news agencies reported. The assault came after several explosions boomed from the area and dozens of hostages, including naked children, fled the school screaming.

A boy cries as he sits in a car with his relatives after he was released from the school seized by heavily armed masked men and women in the town of Beslan in the province of North Ossetia near Chechnya, September 3, 2004. [Reuters]

About 250 hostages were wounded, including 180 children, and five militants were killed in the raid, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. The Interfax news agency reported militants fired at children who ran from the building, and unconfirmed reports said some of the hostage-takers, possibly including women bearing suicide belts, had fled during the chaos and that they may have taken hostages with them.

Hundreds of hostages apparently remained in the building as the firing raged. Women escaping the building were seen fainting and others, some covered in blood, were carried away on stretchers. Many children were only partly clothed because of the stifling heat in the gymnasium where they had been held since the militants took the building Wednesday.

After the escape, commandos assaulted the building and the firing subsided after about 45 minutes, possibly indicating the crisis had come to a violent end.

A video grab image shows security forces surrounding the school seized by heavily armed masked men and women in the town of Beslan in the province of North Ossetia near Chechnya, September 3, 2004. [Reuters]

Interfax reported the school's roof had collapsed - possibly from the explosives some militants had strapped to their bodies. The militants had reportedly threatened to blow up the building if authorities tried to storm.

On Thursday, the militants had freed about 26 hostages, all women and children, and Russian officials had been in negotiations with the militants since they had seized the building Wednesday.

There were conflicting reports of the number of hostages, with official saying about 350 and people among a small group freed on Wednesday saying there were about 1,500.

Russian security forces hide behind the wall during a military operation around the school seized by heavily armed masked men and women in the town of Beslan in the province of North Ossetia near Chechnya , September 3, 2004. Russian soldiers battled Chechen separatists on Friday to end a two-day-old school siege as naked children ran out screaming amid explosions and machinegun fire. [Reuters]

President Vladimir Putin had said that everything possible would be done to end the "horrible" crisis and save the lives of the children.

Two major hostage-taking raids by Chechen rebels outside the war-torn region in the past decade prompted forceful Russian rescue operations that led to many deaths. The most recent, the seizure of a Moscow theatre in 2002, ended after a knockout gas was pumped into the building, debilitating the captors but causing almost all of the 129 hostage deaths.

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