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From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng  (Original Message)    Sent: 8/30/2006 4:19 PM
Russian MP Challenges Beslan Scenario
Publication time: 29 August 2006, 13:15
A few days before the second anniversary of the Beslan massacre, a Russian lawmaker and explosives expert said Monday, August 28, that Russian forces had fired rocket-propelled grenades at the school before the hostage-takers were able to detonate their bombs.

"The first explosion in the gymnasium of the Beslan school on September 3, 2004, was the result of a shot from a rocket-propelled grenade," Yury Savelyev, a member of the parliamentary commission investigating Beslan, told Echo Moscow radio, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

This could have been fired by "the security forces," he said. "This could have been an accidental shot, or it could have been ordered."

The report comes a few days before the second anniversary of the tragedy in which 331 people, including 186 children, died in the September 1-3 siege at a school in the southern Russian town.

Most of the deaths occurred during the chaotic rescue attempt on the last day.

Chechen commander Shamil Basayev, who was recently assassinated by Russian forces, had claimed responsibility for the hostage-taking but blamed the bloodbath on President Vladimir Putin.

"The Kremlin bloodsucker destroyed and injured 1,000 children and adults, having given the order to storm the school for imperialist ambitions," he daid after the carnage.

"The storming was initiated by Russia's security services."

Savelyev has produced a 700-page report based on the testimonies of the hostages, photo and video materials, blasts researches, and calculations.

He concluded that the disastrous battle on September 3 was not sparked by the explosion of two bombs from the hostage-takers, as most officials insist, but two powerful rocket-grenades.

One of the two rockets was a highly destructive incendiary device that set fire to the gymnasium, leading to many of the casualties, said the MP.

Many more died when other parts of the school came under fire from tanks, rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy weapons, he added.

The rockets were fired from the 5-th floor of the building across the besieged schoolhouse, Savelyev averred.

A majority of the parliamentary commission has decided in contrast to Savelyev that the bloody battle was triggered when two bombs set by the hostage-takers exploded, forcing special forces to launch an all-out military assault.

The head of the commission, Parliament's upper-chamber vice-speaker Alexander Torshin, said last year that the hostage-takers set off the initial explosions and that the rocket-propelled grenades could not have started the deadly gymnasium blaze.

The commission, however, has since repeatedly delayed publishing its final report.

Savelyev insisted that "not one of the official versions is supported by science."  

Source: Islam-Online.net
http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2006/08/29/5438.shtml