The Roof of No. 39

Further to my earlier posting How The School Was Stormed, an update:

Novaya Gazeta, No. 78, October 21, 2004

http://2004.novayagazeta.ru/nomer/2004/78n/n78n-s15.shtml

(translation: M.L. and D.M.)

What was on the roof of house No. 39?

The fact that the stories of the Beslan hostages and the evidence of eyewitnesses do not coincide with the official picture of the assault was discussed in issue No. 74 of Novaya Gazeta on October 7. Also, Russian TV asserted that the Spetsnaz used "Bumblebee" rocket-propelled flame-throwers. Recently State Duma deputy Arkady Baskayev, a member of the commission investigating the circumstances of the terrorist act, said on the BBC that in addition to heavy weapons, both rocket propelled grenades and flame-throwers were used in the assault on the school. The most important questions remain to be answered. 1) At what stage of the assault - when the hostages were still in the school or when only the fighters remained - was this weaponry used, in particular the incendiary one (whose use is forbidden under the Geneva convention "in any circumstances, against any object near a concentration of civilian inhabitants"). And 2): will this information be officially confirmed or refuted?
The press was not admitted to the proceedings of the commission. It expressed its desire to work under conditions of secrecy. A member of the North Ossetian President’s administration, Ruslan Kastuyev, did his best to head off inconvenient questions:
- Ruslan, is it true that flame-throwers were used during the assault?
- At present the commission doesn’t know yet. That's why it has come here: in order to clarify matters.
- But deputy Baskayev has said that they were indeed used, and after all he is also a member of this commission.
- Baskayev may know, but the rest of us don’t yet.
Meanwhile, local residents have already known for a long time what the parliamentary commission is unable to dig out. During the assault on Beslan school the Spetsnaz used flame-throwers of the “Bumblebee” type.


***

The five-storey apartment houses on Shkolnyi Pereulok are closest to the school. They stand transversely facing it. In the first hours after the seizure of the hostages all the residents were asked to leave the building. People with flamethrowers took up positions on the roofs. The apartments on the upper floors of the entrances at the far end were occupied by snipers and grenade-throwers. These apartments are at present uninhabited. They have been almost completely burnt out. When the shooting started, the curtains and wallpaper caught fire. The apartments on the lower floors also suffered considerably – they were flooded during the extinguishing of the fire on the upper floors. The house administration is carrying out standard basic repairs, and buying new furniture for the residents.
Georgiy Beroyev’s apartment does not face the school. The Spetsnaz did not enter it. Georgiy remained in it during the assault, he did not go out.
“They occupied the apartments on September 1,” Georgiy says. ‘At first they just sat there, but when our rulers said that no one was going to release the children, they began the assault. They fired at the school. What was going on? They fired so hard that I thought the walls would collapse.
I asked what weapons were used in the firing. Were they flamethrowers?
“No, the people with the flamethrowers were up on the roof.”
It is easy to get on to the roof of house no. 39 through the loft. There, on the roof, some rags have been thrown behind the small caretaker’s booth. There is a large quantity of opened tin cans without labels and a whole mountain of sugar in disposable packages. The metal brackets of the TV antennae stain you with soot if you touch them. They were singed by the rocket jet from a flamethrower, says Elbrus Tedtov, former tank crew member and leader of a special militia company. Under the rubberoid you can find cartridge cases. But it seems that someone managed to tidy up. A new-looking broom is lying here.
People in uniform summon the residents of the surrounding houses one at a time and ask them not say much about the event. Militiaman Aleksandr P. says that after the assault he was quite simply subjected to an interrogation:
“They said to me: “There were TV people in your house. Where’s the videotape? I told them they should ask the TV people. But they still demanded the videotape… “


Olga Bobrova, our special correspondent in Beslan


At first hand

Our military correspondent Vyacheslav Izmailov got in touch with Colonel-General Arkady Baskayev, who is a member of the State Duma Security Committee and who works on the staff of the commission which is studying the activity of the law-enforcement agencies and special services during the period of the seizure and the release of the hostages from School No. 1.
- Arkady Georgiyevich, in one of the radio interviews you gave several days ago you said that heavy artillery was used on the terrorists in Beslan.
- That is not quite so. A statement about the use of heavy guns was made by the
commander of the 58th army, whose command and headquarters are located in Vladikavkaz, and sub-units of which were mobilized during the release of the hostages, and also during the school’s de-mining.
- Were heavy guns used when the hostages were still in the school?
- No. At present we are working in Beslan to explain, minute by minute and in the smallest details, how the officials, the HQ for the freeing of the hostages, the law-enforcement agencies, the servicemen – all who were mobilized in this operation – worked.
- Will the results of the work of your commission's be made public?
- They will be fully made public. Here there can be no secrets. Excluding, perhaps, the descriptions of some of the technical resources which may possibly be used in future and about which terrorists must not know. Also, the names of the officers of the special sub-units that were mobilized in the destruction of the terrorists cannot be made public.

21.10.2004