Yahoo! News - Russia School Seizure Was Long Planned
MOSCOW - Militants appear to have planned their seizure of a Russian school carefully, starting months earlier and sneaking weapons into the building in advance. Still, some of the raiders may not have known what they were getting into and were appalled to find they were holding children hostage.
Some of the objecting militants were killed by their own comrades, the lawyer for a captured militant told The Associated Press.
Pieces of the picture of how militants took more than 1,000 hostages at the school in Beslan were falling into place, mainly from news reports citing unspecified but presumably official sources. Officials are saying little publicly — Federal Security Service spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko declined to immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press on Monday.
But the reports portray the raid as a fastidiously prepared operation — in which militants used renovation work as a cover to plant arms and explosives in the school — almost literally under authorities' noses.
MOSCOW - Militants appear to have planned their seizure of a Russian school carefully, starting months earlier and sneaking weapons into the building in advance. Still, some of the raiders may not have known what they were getting into and were appalled to find they were holding children hostage.
Some of the objecting militants were killed by their own comrades, the lawyer for a captured militant told The Associated Press.
Pieces of the picture of how militants took more than 1,000 hostages at the school in Beslan were falling into place, mainly from news reports citing unspecified but presumably official sources. Officials are saying little publicly — Federal Security Service spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko declined to immediately respond to questions from The Associated Press on Monday.
But the reports portray the raid as a fastidiously prepared operation — in which militants used renovation work as a cover to plant arms and explosives in the school — almost literally under authorities' noses.
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