School's shell offers grim testament to terror
BESLAN, Russia Shafts of light passed through the bullet holes in the pupils' desks, which had been stacked at windows, improvised barricades against attack. Grisly scenes awaited behind them.Middle School No. 1, the scene of the terrorist attack and siege that claimed hundreds of lives last week, was open to the people of Beslan on Sunday, and they were drawn to it by an almost gravitational pull.Not long after the authorities and the Russian Army had broken down the police lines and quietly slipped away in the darkness Saturday night, the school stood looming and empty, a large and foreboding shell.But as word of access to the scene of the siege spread from Ossetian to Ossetian, it seemed as if the entire population of the town appeared, passing through the school's corridors in disturbing, macabre tours.The Russian authorities announced Sunday that the death count from the siege had reached 338, and many of the hundreds of wounded were in critical condition. They also noted that the republic's minister of the interior had submitted a letter of resignation, which the republic had refused.But such news held little attention.The people of Beslan were drawn irresistibly forward, into the hellish place, to see it for themselves.The sights were unsparingly grim. The explosions of two bombs amid the captive children, and the final battle that had rolled through the hallways and classrooms on Friday afternoon, had left a trail of destruction and carnage, which combined to form a gruesome display.The roof of the gymnasium where the captives were held was gone; the wooden floor of the basketball court was covered with its wreckage; a few beams were covered in a thick coat of black ash. Women's and children's shoes were in places still arranged in lines along the floor.The bathroom to one side showed where some wounded hostages had staggered, leaving bloody handprints on tiles.The architecture suggested that some of the smallest children had met a horrible end. There was only one door in the gymnasium leading outside. After the first bomb detonated, scores of children had saved themselves by pulling themselves out eight large windows that offered a chance at freedom after a blast had blown away the glass.But the windows were high, at chest level for an adult, beyond the reach of the very young.Inside the school, amid cracked water pipes and crumbling ceilings, signs of the battle's ferocity appeared at most every turn. Uncountable thousands of bullet holes and shrapnel marks scarred the walls. Blood-soaked bandages littered the floor.The flesh and hair and bits of bone of the female suicide bombers were splattered along the ceilings and walls of a classroom on the first floor. The remains of another suicide bomber coated the corridor near the cafeteria.Townspeople picked their way through its mess with shirts pulled over their noses.Incongruity was the norm. New badminton rackets were bundled together among the dust and debris, as were an assortment of brightly colored jump ropes.In the second-story assembly hall, located in a corner of the building where the militants had held out almost into Friday night, the floor was ruined by seven shrapnel-pocked craters that marked the explosion of grenades, presumably thrown into the room as Russian soldiers cleared the last pockets of resistance room by room.On the auditorium's stage a large cut-out display read "Happy Holiday." On the wall of a classroom opposite a suicide bomber's grisly remains were signs for basic arithmetic."4+2=6," read one. "6-2=4." A strip of the woman's scalp was curled on a nearby desk.In one hallway, a man stopped and scraped his shoe along a broken board. He had stepped in something sticky by the door. "Brains," he said.No matter how repugnant a place Middle School No. 1 had become, the people could not stay away.They sifted through the rubble and pulled out hints of the terrorist's preparation: abandoned gas masks, compasses, bags of dried soups and first aid kits. They clustered over two large holes where the wooden floor in the library had been pulled up, where the authorities suspect that sometime before the attack, ammunition and equipment had been hidden.Residents also spoke of the roles that had been forced upon them, survivors and rescuers walking among the widowers and parents who had lost daughters and sons.One boy, Murat Kulayev, 13, used a teapot to douse the last fire, a smoldering floor of a classroom at the end of the corridor on the second floor. He had been one of the fortunate few to escape after the terrorists' initial attack.He retraced his route, narrating. As the masked men herded the student body and staff through a door, he said, leading them toward their eventual confinement on the basketball court, he and a friend had a chance at escape.At the bottom of a staircase that met the entrance hall, they broke left and bounded upstairs, chased by two men with beards that hung beneath their masks.Lithe and young, they outdistanced their pursuers, who were laden with ammunition and Kalashnikov rifles slung across their backs.The boys ran madly down the empty hallway, passing door by door, each glimpse providing the sight of two terrorists not far behind.At last Murat and his friend reached the school's opposite side, where they broke a window on the stairwell, climbed outside, and reached the ground by swiftly shimmying down a pipe. "Then we ran away," he said.By that time, their classmates were being amassed in the gym, where scores would die.As the tour on Sunday progressed, a woman in a blue-print dress and head scarf wandered the first-floor hallways, wailing, screaming, past the ghastly streaks of flesh made by the suicide bombers, searching the place on her own. The townspeople who watched her pass, weeping as well, said she was looking for a son who had not come home.She entered the nearly empty cafeteria and passed through it, and proceeded even to the kitchen and pantries, to the last unlit and darkened corner, screaming and sobbing, pulling herself up over the rubble to look for him behind a refrigerator that had been knocked on its side. She found nothing, and helplessly wandered out, filling the room with piercing, incomprehensible cries.Upstairs, Oleg Kasumov picked through the ruins of a second-floor classroom. He lifted up a drying bouquet of red roses, brought for the first day of school, and tossed them aside. "They never were used as they were intended," he said.Kasumov was gathering books scattered along the floor and stacking them onto a stretcher to carry them away. It was the office of his sister, Yelena Ganiyeva, the school's chief of staff.His sister had survived, and was hospitalized. He said she is a book collector, and would want her collection back. The task seemed to sustain Kasumov, who worked steadily at stacking the books neatly, distracting him from the knowledge that his daughter, Inna, had not yet been found.Down the hall, Teimuraz Kanukov stood in a foul-smelling classroom with three teenage daughters and two younger sons. A window sill was streaked with large dried pools of blood, the platform from which residents said the terrorists had shoved out dead hostages.The window overlooked the school's lawn from which Kanukov had rushed the wounded and dead during the battle, risking his life along the edges of this lawn to carry them to waiting cars. He looked at the wall outside where he had taken cover, just under the school's windows, and described a terrible scene - a woman, one of the hostage takers, shooting a man who was trying to save his children."So many bullets were flying that you could not even put your nose past here," he said. He described one father who ran across the open lawn to try to reach the school. He made it about 100 feet, or 30 meters, before he was struck and fell down. Then, as they watched him writhing, exposed on the ground, one of the women among the terrorists appeared above him."She was shooting from the window, finishing him," Kanukov said. "We saw how the bullets hit his body."On a table down the hallway, the twisted fins of a rocket-propelled grenade stood on a table beside a stack of books. On top was one of the novels by Nikolai Gogol, a satiric master from the 19th century, Russia's golden age of prose. The title was faced upward, "Dead Souls."The New York Times
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try to stop me. i dare you. name: maureen nick names: momo, slo mo, homeslice, shweaty, krikes, fOO, sister, burnt toast, mofo, pigeon, peeeejon, fluffy, irish girl, mick, optimistic cow, mo-wobble, crunchiez, speed racer, croc hunna, qui-qui, white trash, redneck, giant, homie, trick, crazy girl nationality: IRISH BABY!!!! oh snap!! watch out now!! birfday: 4. 27. 84 where i spend my time: holdin it down in los angeles and chicago educated at: immac grad of 02, studied in mexico and chicago but i call slo my home majoring in: international studies and spanish hobbies: chillin with all the homies... if u kno me... u kno how i do cheers for: THE ONE AND ONLY... LOS ANGELES LAKERS!!! BOW DOWN TO GREATNESS!! and the loyola chicago ramblers shout outs to: all the PANDAS!! and the MUSTANGS!! the MRC, the VIP(4 eva), all the homies, the pigeons, 2 skwerd, da CKKW! the TOAST family, yo momma chip cookiez, the MCK!!! the bread box crew and the fOO tang clan!! [alisha] [amy] [angie] [belinda] [bj] [chris] [christine c] [christine n] [christine t] [coleen] [cressa] [erlynne] [francine] [gladys] [heather] [jhona] [joanna] [kat] [keith] [maddy] [maria] [marlene] [michelle] [robert] [sharlene b.] [sue] [vanessa] Blogger Blogskins DynamicDrive home may 02 june 02 july 02 august 02 september 02 october 02 november 02 december 02 january 03 february 03 march 03 april 03 may 03 june 03 july 03 august 03 september 03 october 03 november 03 december 03 january 04 february 04 march 04 april 04 may 04 june 04 july 04 august 04 september 04 october 04 november 04 december 04 january 05 february 05 march 05 april 05 may 05 june 05 july 05 august 05 september 05 october 05 november 05 designed by: dreamwalker game scripted by: Lancer game script from: syahidah time & calendar scripts from: DynamicDrive  |
99 problems but a bitch aint one had a rugby game on saturday... we won :-D other news... its starting to get a bit cooler out here.... gotta admit that im missing cali.... :( not enough to start a count down til when i come home or anything.... but definitely something missing.... cali... we kno how to chill better than anyone else.... foreal.... i wanna kick it cali style... would give quite a lot for that... but beyond that life is good.... interesting.... different everyday... ya kno how it goes.... well i hope everyone is doing well... i miss ya.... adios kids... *BIG HEART* . so kids i'm rockin out here in the midwest... i gotta admit that my adjustment to this place was a hell of a lot easier than cal poly (so far) ::knock on wood:: but i definitely still get a bit homesick now and again.... yet again i just have that feeling of lacking something... that some need that i have is just not being met... i have yet to figure out wut it is... so i guess i just gotta keep my head up argh.... today was for the most part a pleasant day... i really do like it out here in chicago... i gotta say that i wish i had a base of friends here at loyola... shout out to francine!! for being my chicago base.... but oh well... if the world was perfect i would be bored so there ya go... could someone please tell me how to post pictures on this thing? i have no idea how to..... ok adios *big heart* i haven't done one of these for a while so here ya go.... song of the day holiday by weezer Let's go away for a while
Holiday
Heartbeat!
Don't bother to pack your bags
Holiday
Heartbeat!
We will write a postcard
On the road with Kerouac,
Heartbeat!
Let's go away for a while
Holiday
Let's go away!
. so i had my first "real" rugby game yesterday... (last weeks was versus the alums so it didnt really count) so i only played for about 5 minutes of the game.... why u ask? was i really that bad? well i didnt get to play long enough to really show good or bad.... so someone tosses me the ball.... at that point the game is a lot like football... the person w/ the ball gets tackled... there are some slightly different rules in rugby tho... ur only supposed to tackle the person from below the collar bone.... so someone tosses me the ball... there are 3 girls coming at me from ahead... i get prepped to make contact... i am about 2-3 feet away from these girls when suddenly i find myself hurled to the ground, hit my head and am dazed as feck.... i hear whistles blowing both by the refs and other whistles which seem to be ringing in my head.... turns out some stupid heffa on the other team decided that she didnt need to play by the rules... ... she decided that instead of tackling me from below the waist... that my NECK seemed like a better target.... so she high tackled me from the neck causing me to hit the ground, drop the ball and lose some brain cells... so i lay there dazed and confused as the coach rushes towards me and the field did laps around me... i thought i could still play as i staggered to my feet... the coach left me in for about another minute until it became obvious that i was in no condition to be on the field.... i was taken off the field, checked for concussions (which i luckily did not have), drugged up and left to rest... and that my friends.... was my first (real) rugby game . man i keep trying to blog and i just have nothing all that important to say... :-( oh well.... i got another rugby game tomorrow.... hope that goes well.... i need to be more focused on skool... ::knock on wood:: yea... i miss slo a bit... :-/ well... some of the ppl more like it.... oh well... gotta do wut ya gotta do.... i have some pretty spectacular bruises... seriously... if someone could tell me how to post pics on this thing i would show u all the joys of rugby.... ya ever realize how much time u really spend alone? not that i particularly mind.... but really.... i do spend a HUGE portion of my time by myself... oh well... i definitely need some quality mofo time.... but hmmm.... i wonder if i've crossed the line from balanced to hermit? im not sure.... in other news... the UN secretary general, kofi annan, said in an interview that the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq was illegal.... hmmm GO REPUBLICANS!! not only does the rest of the world hate us but now we're official criminals!!! wahoo!!! goddamn... just goddamn.... well kids... thats all from me for now.... adios *big heart* . so i played my first game of rugby yesterday.... i was amazing.... amazingly HORRIBLE!!! omg.... i really wanted to cry and damn near did.... i was just SO bad!!!! i kno i kno.... i'm a rookie gotta learn and get experience.... and i will and all that but still.... i was SO SO SO bad!!!! it was just such a self-esteem basher.... just wow..... thats all i gotta say.... wow.... hahahahaha.... i felt so bad yesterday.... but now i guess its kinda funny.... well.... it'll be funnier as time goes on.... not too funny now.... but i kno it will be.... eventually.... oh welll hahaha oh yea.... CONGRATS TO KEITH AND BELINDA ON YOUR 2 YEAR ANNIVERSARY!!!!! ok i have so much shit to do and i'm so exhausted from yesterday.... *bastards* well i'm mid laundry so i should go check.... alrite adios kids!!! *BIG HEART*!!!! :-D . so i just heard a song that i really like... but i can't find a complete set of lyrics... its by saigon called "kiss the babies" here's all i can find of the lyrics "It's the end of the way of life as we know it, this is the last straw/ George Bush about to declare the last war/ Tell everybody you love that you still love 'em/ and if you got kids, then take time to hug 'em/ I don't really think that you know what n!ggas is facing/ We are near the end of a twisted civilization/ This isn't a nation, cut all the money for education/ and build more prisons as a replacement/ How is it that they can win a war against terror and/ in the ghetto we losing the war against heroine?/ Where are all the thoro men, the Martins, the Malcolms/ the ones that will lose they life to change the outcome?" me gusta este cancion. so tonite i have my "initiation" for rugby... i'm looking forward to it.... i'm assuming that its going to contain lots of drinking... muahahahahahaha..... i can't run for shit.... don't really understand the rules of rugby.... but i CAN drink dammit!!! i can be the fuckin MVP of this shit.... ok adios i love you . so i have joined the women's rugby team here at loyola. it is kicking my ass. most of the ppl seem really cool so i'm happy that i joined... even if i have so many bruises it looks like i'm going out with ike turner.... its all good... besides the fact that my entire body hurts... oh well... i am enjoying it and yea... thats that. beyond that i do like it here in the midwest... ppl are different... not majorly.... but they are different than us californians... starting to gear up for the winter... thats gonna kick my ass.... or freeze it off... i dunno... i guess i started to get slightly worried when someone was saying that it gets to -20 WITHOUT including the windchill.... including windchill it can get to around -40. i will inform everyone how i am (not) surviving my first actual winter... i'm in the library because i really need to do some homework... but goddammit... i'm fuckin lazy... like always.... oh well... thats how it goes. its weird... i feel like i'm missing something... just a hole where something should be... i have no idea wut i am missing or how to go about fixing it so its just kind of frustrating... hopefully rugby will knock it out of me... literally... overall life is pretty dandy... muahahaha.... hope everyone is doing well... i miss u... love you too adios .  . Here are the top nine comments made by NBC sports commentators so > far > during the Summer Olympics that they would like to take back: > > >1. Weightlifting commentator: "This is Gregoriava from Bulgaria. I > saw > her snatch this morning during her warm up and it was amazing." > > 2. Dressage commentator: "This is really a lovely horse and I speak > from > personal experience since I once mounted her mother." > > 3. Paul Hamm, Gymnast: "I owe a lot to my parents, especially my > mother > and father." > > 4. Boxing Analyst: "Sure there have been injuries, and even some > deaths > in boxing, but none of them really that serious." > > 5. Softball announcer: "If history repeats itself, I should think > we can > expect the same thing again." > > 6. Basketball analyst: "He dribbles a lot and the opposition > doesn't > like it. In fact you can see it all over their faces." > > 7. At the rowing medal ceremony: "Ah, isn't that nice, the wife of > the > IOC president is hugging the cox of the British crew." > > 8. Soccer commentator: "Julian Dicks is everywhere. It's like > they've > got eleven Dicks on the field." > > 9. Tennis commentator: "One of the reasons Andy is playing so well > is > that, before the final round, his wife takes out his balls and > kisses > them... Oh my God, what have I just said?" . |
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