RUSSIA Attackers hold hundreds after seizing school

The 17 attackers, both male and female, wore bomb belts.
MOSCOW (AP) -- Attackers wearing suicide-bomb belts seized a school in a Russian region bordering Chechnya today and were holding hundreds of hostages, including 200 children. The assault came a day after a suicide bomber killed 10 people in Moscow.
The seizure began after a ceremony marking the first day of the Russian school year, reports said, when it was likely that many parents had accompanied their children to class. The attackers warned they would blow up the school if police tried to storm it and forced children to stand at the windows, said Alexei Polyansky, a police spokesman for southern Russia.
Suspected perpetrators
Both the school attack and the Moscow bombing appeared to be the work of Chechen rebels or their sympathizers, but there was no evidence of any direct link. The two strikes came just a week after two Russian planes carrying 90 people crashed almost simultaneously in what officials also say were terrorist bombings.
"In essence, war has been declared on us, where the enemy is unseen and there is no front," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said, according to the Interfax-Military News Agency. He spoke before the seizure.
The latest violence also appears to be timed around Sunday's presidential elections in Chechnya, a Kremlin-backed move aimed at undermining support for the insurgents by establishing a modicum of civil order in the war-shattered republic. The previous Chechen president, Akhmad Kadyrov, was killed along with more than 20 others in a bombing May 9.
Gunfire wounds people
Gunfire broke out after the raid and at least three teachers and two police officers were wounded, Polyansky said. More gunfire and several explosions were heard about three hours later, the Interfax news agency reported.
He said most of the attackers were wearing suicide bomb belts.
The attackers demanded talks with regional officials and a well-known pediatrician, Leonid Roshal, who had aided hostages during the seizure of a Moscow theater in 2002, news reports said.
Their demands
The hostage-takers demanded the release of fighters detained over a series of attacks on police facilities in neighboring Ingushetia in June, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported, citing regional officials. The well-coordinated raids killed more than 90 people.
ITAR-Tass, citing regional emergency officials, said about 400 people, including some 200 children, were being held captive. A regional police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the hostages had been herded into the school gymnasium.
There were 17 attackers, both male and female, Interfax said, citing Ismel Shaov, a regional spokesman for the Federal Security Service.
In television footage from outside the school in Beslan, a town about 10 miles north of the regional capital of Vladikavkaz, men in camouflage with heavy-caliber machine guns took up positions on the perimeter and other men in civilian dress with light automatic rifles paced nervously.
At one point, a girl of about age 7 in a floral print dress and a red bow in her hair streaked around a corner apparently after fleeing from the school, followed by an older woman. Russian news reports said about 50 students managed to escape, some after hiding in the school's boiler room during the raid.
String of violence
The attack was the latest in a string of violence that has tormented Russians and plagued the government of President Vladimir Putin, who came to power in 2000 vowing to crush the Chechen rebels but has been largely unable to do so.
Terrorism fears in Russia had risen markedly after the plane crashes and the suicide bombing outside a Moscow subway station Tuesday night that killed 10 people and wounded more than 50.
Muslim claims
A militant Muslim Web site published a statement claiming responsibility for the bombing on behalf of the "Islambouli Brigades," a group that also claimed responsibility for the airliner crashes. The veracity of the statements could not immediately be confirmed.
The statement said Tuesday's bombing was a blow against Putin, "who slaughtered Muslims time and again." Putin has refused to negotiate with rebels in predominantly Muslim Chechnya who have fought Russian forces for most of the past decade, saying they must be wiped out.
Putin interrupted his working holiday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi today and returned to Moscow, after doing the same last week because of the plane crashes. Upon arrival at the Moscow airport, Putin held an immediate meeting with the heads of Russia's Interior Ministry and Federal Security Service, the Interfax news agency said.