kyer: animal? vegetable? mineral?: A nation mourns...

9/06/2004

A nation mourns...

(...more photos) (Note: Very graphic)

AFP - Click to Enlarge Moscow Times: 61 Hours of Horror (a chronology) You won't find this in America... "This is a challenge to all of Russia, to all our people. This is an attack against all of us," Putin confesses, "We demonstrated our weakness, and the weak are beaten," EU to Russia: "We also would like to know from the Russian authorities how this tragedy could have happened."(from the same terrorism-oblivous EU whose member-nation France was baffled by abduction of French journalists)

In traditional Zeropean cowardice, Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot: "There obviously was a misunderstanding... '"My words have been misinterpreted."

Moscow Times: Officials: 10 Terrorists Were Foreign

Natalya Arkova, a 10-year-old held hostage, said one terrorist cut a small boy's hand to make it look like he was carrying out a wounded child. But the crowd outside pointed the man out to soldiers, who promptly killed him. A regional security official told Itar-Tass on Sunday that 10 attackers had no identification with them that could determine their countries of origin. "Going by visual signs, one of the dead terrorists was black," the official said, Itar-Tass reported. "The other nine come from Arab countries. Experts are almost positive, judging by the type and size of their faces and other signs, that the nine Arabs come from countries near the equatorial part of the Arabian peninsula, such as Sudan and Yemen."

Thomas de Waal, Caucasus Editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London:

"This is not a happy part of the world. It is poor, mostly Muslim and increasingly alienated from the rest of Russia. Unemployment is high, particularly among young people. Local rulers are authoritarian and corrupt. Racism by ethnic Russians towards North Caucasians is on the rise. Over the past four years Moscow has shored up its chosen leaders, kept up the subsidies and helped suppress dissent but by doing so it is storing up hidden problems for itself. On current trends, in a generation much of the region could resemble parts of the Middle East or North Africa more than it does Russia. And sure enough radical Islam is finding willing recruits among young men, particularly in places like Kabardino-Balkaria that seem quiet on the surface." (more...)

(Note: All emphasis mine)

# posted by kyer : 9/06/2004 09:45:00 AM