REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Saturday September 4, 2004

RUSSIAN soldiers battled Chechen separatists to end a two-day-old school siege as naked children ran out screaming amid explosions and machinegun fire.

Most of the child hostages in the southern Russian school were alive, Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted a security official as saying.

“Those children who remained in the school, in general, did not suffer,” said the official.

“The ones who suffered were the children in the group which ran from the school and on whom the fighters opened fire.”

Russian special forces charged into the school and it was under the control of Russian forces, reported Tass news agency.

NTV television reported that five of the armed gang which seized the school had been killed.

About 10 of the hostages were killed in the drama and up to 250 injured - 158 of them were children. A Reuters correspondent saw soldiers carrying children away from the school, some covered in blood, as military helicopters circled overhead and ambulances ferried wounded hostages away, all to the sound of continuous gunfire.

The Tass news agency reported that some 40 children had been evacuated from the school by 7.50pm Australian time.

Interfax news agency reported some of the group of hostage-takers, believed to number about 40, had tried to break out through crowds of frantic relatives waiting near the school as Russian special forces moved in.