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> zabitych przez bezladny ogien pospolitego ruszenia  ....
>       NAZRAN, Russia, Sept. 6 - The guerrillas who took over a school in
> southern Russia last week argued heatedly with each other over whether to
> abandon the siege in the moments leading up to the firestorm of explosions
> and shooting that killed hundreds of children and adults, Russian
officials
> said Monday.
>       Russian special services had a surveillance tape of the militants
> fighting about whether to stay or flee just before a bomb they had planted
> in the school gym went off, prompting Russian commandos to storm the
> building, a senior Kremlin official said. Investigators were exploring
> whether the bomb detonated by accident or as a result of the internal
> dispute.
>       As more details surfaced about the massacre at School No. 1 in the
> town of Beslan, a partial picture emerged of the guerrillas and the four
men
> who led them into the school, where investigators say they took orders by
> phone from a Chechen commander, Shamil Basayev.
>       The leaders, they said, included a bodyguard of Basayev's and a
former
> police officer who turned against authorities and led a bloody attack in
the
> neighboring republic of Ingushetia last June.
>       All four leaders were killed in the battle at the school,
authorities
> say.
>       The Kremlin official, Aslanbek Aslakhanov, said in an interview that
> more than 20 elite Russian commandos were killed in the day-long battle
that
> began Friday, many of them accidentally shot in the back by armed civilian
> vigilantes who rushed to the school to fight for their children. The
> previously undisclosed death toll, he said, surpasses any in the history
of
> the famed Alpha and Vympel special forces units.
>       Reigniting the North Caucasus
>       In sorting through the origins of the hostage crisis, Russian
> officials said they had concluded that the strike against a target outside
> Chechnya, the scene of nearly 10 years of intermittent fighting, was part
of
> a broader strategy to reignite the entire North Caucasus, a historically
> volatile region of mixed ethnic and religious groups. While the government
> has admitted to lying about the scope of the hostage crisis at first, its
> analysis about the goals and Chechen sponsorship coincides with that of
> independent specialists.
>       "The puppet leaders who organized these fierce incursions, they are
> attempting to destabilize the situation in the North Caucasus and make one
> people go against another," said Aslakhanov, President Vladimir Putin's
top
> Chechnya adviser. "They are inciting old grudges and unsolved problems."
>       To bolster their version of events, Russian officials put a Chechen
> man they identified as a captured guerrilla on state television Monday
night
> to make the first public statement by any of those involved in seizing the
> school. Visibly injured and having trouble talking, the prisoner described
> one of the ring leaders giving the orders for the attack.
>       "We gathered in the forest and the Colonel -- it's his nickname --
and
> they said we must seize the school in Beslan," said the man, who had
short,
> dark hair and no beard. He said the orders came from Basayev and another
> Chechen commander, Aslan Maskhadov, and that his group included Arabs and
> Uzbeks as well as Chechens and people of other nationalities. "When we
asked
> the Colonel why we must do it, he said, 'Because we need to start war in
the
> entire territory of the North Caucasus.' "
>       Many of the guerrillas who seized the Beslan school in the Russian
> republic of North Ossetia took part in raids in Ingushetia in June that
> killed 90 people, investigators said Monday. "They're the same people that
> attacked Ingushetia," said Musa Apiyev, deputy interior minister in
> Ingushetia. "They're traveling, they're moving from place to place,
> exploiting the weak spots in our positions, and they're running from spot
to
> spot committing their dark crimes."
>       Ingushetia and North Ossetia, located south and west of Chechnya,
are
> dominated by different ethnic groups and fought a brief territorial war in
> 1992. Relations have remained tense since. In the days after the school
> hostage crisis, many Ossetians have blamed the Ingush and warned of
> retribution.
>       "It appears to be a deliberate provocation to reignite the conflict
> between Ingushetia and North Ossetia, to extend the range of the chaos,"
> said Fiona Hill, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington who
> was among a group of Westerners that met with Putin on Monday. "It's very
> easy to stir up the region if you want to, and somebody wants to. This is
a
> wake-up call. The whole of the Caucasus is going to go up at this rate."
>       Putin raised the specter of the region breaking apart from Moscow
> during a meeting with Hill and other visiting Westerners late Monday.
> "There's a Yugoslavia variant here," he said, according to notes taken by
> Eileen O'Connor, a participant. "It would be difficult to imagine the
> consequences for the rest of the world. Bear in mind Russia is a nuclear
> power."
>       The four leaders inside the school represented the spectrum of the
> region's ethnic groups: a Chechen, a Russian, an Ingush and an Ossetian,
> according to tentative identifications by Russian officials. What remained
> unclear was the extent of the involvement of Arab fighters, if any.
Russian
> officials initially said 10 of the hostage-takers were Arabs, but
surviving
> hostages said in interviews that they saw no Arabs and not one was
> identified as a leader to outside negotiators.
>       Arab connection?
>       Russian investigators are checking out reports from an unidentified
> Western intelligence service suggesting that some of the attackers came
from
> Jordan and Syria, according to a source briefed on the government's
> investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity
> of the matter. An Islamic group tied to al Qaeda's second-in-command,
Ayman
> Zawahiri, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
>       But some analysts remained skeptical, arguing that the Russians were
> exaggerating the Arab connection so Putin could claim to be fighting
> international terrorists rather than domestic nationalists.
>       "It could be there were advisers from the Middle East, but
initiating
> the plan, executing it, belonged to locals," said Alexei Malashenko, a
> regional specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research
organization.
>       Calling the shots, according to Russian investigators, was Basayev,
> the brutal guerrilla leader who has fought the Russians in two wars over
the
> past 10 years and been designated a terrorist by the United States and
> United Nations.
>       Basayev stormed a Russian hospital in 1995 and took more than 1,000
> patients and doctors hostage and sponsored the capture of a Moscow theater
> in 2002 that led to the deaths of 129 civilians.
>       In apparent retaliation for the attack on the school, Russian
> authorities rounded up relatives of Basayev and Maskhadov in Chechnya on
the
> second day of the siege. "I think it was to be hostages for hostages,"
> Akhmed Zakayev, a Maskhadov lieutenant, said in an interview. Twenty of
> Maskhadov's relatives were detained and later released, Zakayev said.
>       Col. Ilya Shabalkin, a military spokesman, said the family members
> were held at the main base in Chechnya for their own protection. "We hid
> them in Khankala for two days to avoid vengeance actions against them," he
> said.
>       The 32 guerrillas who seized School No. 1 in Beslan managed to evade
> detection on the way to the school by traveling along forest roads and
> picking up at least one and perhaps several police officers along the way
> who helped get them through checkpoints, investigators said. "Most likely
> these people were made to do that under threat," said Apiyev, Ingushetia's
> deputy interior minister.
>       Internal rift
>       Investigators are still trying to piece together how the first bomb,
> which triggered the confrontation, went off. Aslakhanov said one theory
was
> that a guerrilla grew confused over the wires and connected the wrong
ones.
> But Aslakhanov also pointed to the internal rift.
>       "The special services have a recording of a split among the
> terrorists," he said. "Some wanted to leave and others wanted to stay. The
> conflict was happening and at that moment this tragic explosion occurred."
>       The four commanders of the school operation were identified by the
> code-names Abdullah, Fantomas, the Colonel and Magas.
>       Abdullah, described as an Ossetian named Vladimir Khodoyev, fought
> alongside Basayev in the past. Fantomas was a Basayev bodyguard who may be
> Chechen or Russian, officials said. The Colonel appeared to be a Russian
who
> many of the hostages remembered as a regular presence in the gym.
>       The fourth commander drew the most attention, a man known as Magas,
a
> nickname taken from Ingushetia's capital. Magas emerged this year as head
of
> the Ingush Jamaat, a militant group allied with the Chechen guerrillas,
and
> he led the June raids in his native Ingushetia, killing dozens of police
> officers and prosecutors. He has defied efforts to hunt him down. Russian
> authorities twice reported killing him this summer, only to discover they
> were wrong.
>       "I know that he's dangerous," said Nurdi Doklayev, a Nazran city
> investigator who examined the June raids. "All the adjectives -- cruel,
bad,
> angry -- could fit this guy because he's