Russia,Chechnya and other issues in the area

Moscow police are conducting a partial evacuation at the Kursk railway station in central Moscow as they search for explosives after receiving an anonymous phone call from a man threatening to detonate a bomb at the station, Interfax news service reported.

Train services at the station haven't been disrupted, the news service said, citing the Interior Ministry's department on railway transport.

A suicide bomber last night detonated an explosive device near a subway station entrance in northern Moscow, killing 10 people and injuring 51, in the third terrorist attack in the country in one week. A group calling itself the Islambouli Brigades claimed responsibility for the blast in a statement posted on an Islamic Web site, according to Agence France-Presse.

Armed men seized a school in the Russian region of North Ossetia Wednesday morning and were in a gun battle with police, news reports said. The region borders with warring Chechnya.

The seizure took place on the first day of the Russian school year, when it was likely that a large number of parents had accompanied their children to class.

The reports said the seizure took place in the city of Beslan. Further details were not immediately available and law-enforcement officials could not be reached for comment.

Beslan about 10 miles north of Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, a republic that borders warring Chechnya.

Vladimir Yakovlev, President Vladimir Putin's envoy for the southern region of Russia that includes North Ossetia, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was unclear how many children, teachers and parents may be held in the school.

200 children held hostage' in Russia

Attackers bearing guns and wrapped in suicide-bomb belts men seized a school in the Russian region of North Ossetia today and were holding hundreds of hostages including some 200 children, news reports said.

The seizure took place on the first day of the Russian school year, when it was likely that hundreds of parents had accompanied their children to class. Reports said the raid took place just after a ceremony marking the school year's start.

Sergei Vlasov, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry in Moscow, confirmed the seizure, but did not immediately have further details.

The ITAR-Tass news agency, citing regional emergency officials, said about 400 people including some 200 children were being held captive.

The Interfax news agency, citing Ismel Shaov, a regional spokesman for the Federal Security Service, said there were 17 attackers, both make and female, and the gang included some who were wearing suicide-bomb belts.

The in the city of Beslan, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) north of Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, a republic that borders warring Chechnya.

There were no immediate reports of whether the assailants were making demands or indications of who they were.

However, Chechen rebels who raided a Moscow theater in 2002, seizing hundreds of hostages, included women who were heavily wrapped with explosives.

In 1995, Chechen rebels led by warlord Shamil Basayev seized a hospital in the southern Russian city of Budyonnovsk, taking some 2,000 people hostage. The six-day standoff ended with a fierce Russian police assault. Some 100 people died in the incident.

Wednesday's seizure came as terrorism fears in Russia rose markedly following a suicide bombing outside a Moscow subway station on Tuesday night that killed 10 people and injured more than 50 and last week's near-simultaneous crashes of two Russian airliners, killing a total of 90 people, that officials say were terrorist bombings.

The attacks bracketed Sunday's presidential elections in Chechnya, a Kremlin-baked move aimed at undermining support for the insurgents by establishing a modicum of civil order in the war-shattered republic.

Fears that the Chechen rebels aimed to export their fight outside the small republic's borders rose in June after insurgents launched a coordinated series of attacks on police facilities in neighboring Ingushetia, in which more than 90 people were killed.

In a videotape released several days after the attack, a man appearing to be Basayev claimed responsibility for the assaults and said his fighters had seized huge quantities of arms from police arsenals.

For the rest: keep doing the good work Thok

Maybe I'm whining too much

This is serious all the time

Walter Hinteler wrote:

This is serious all the time

yes, but now really dangerous for the hostages and relatives as well as all people around.