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CNN Live At Daybreak
Russian Forces Storm School; Bracing for Frances
Aired September 03, 2004 - 06:37 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We have to talk about Hurricane Frances right now. She is still out there in the Atlantic Ocean, and it's one huge storm, the size of Texas. Frances has been downgraded to a category 3 storm.
Right now, we have Rob Marciano in the weather center. Chad Myers is in Melbourne, Florida, this morning.
Let's start with Rob and the track the storm.
(WEATHER BREAK)
COSTELLO: It's so funny, Chad, to look at the weather behind you. It looks so beautiful in Melbourne, Florida, this morning.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It is, Carol. But the winds just gusted to 30, and we're so far away from this eye, and the winds have been picking up all morning long. When we got here at 5:00 it was 20; now it's 30.
You know, and if we keep doing this every couple of hours, we're actually going to be in the 60 to 70-per-mile range here pretty soon. I would say at least by maybe the noon or 2:00 hour we're going to start to feel tropical-storm-force winds, not quite hurricane-force winds today yet or at least this afternoon.
But, yes, the sun is coming up over the horizon. It looks beautiful. There were a couple of thunder clouds out there, a lot of lightning and thunder to our south. It kind of did drift on back down south, probably down to around Fort Pierce right now, one of the final -- the way, way outside outer bands.
But it's going to go down here rather quickly, and eventually by tomorrow morning we're going to be hunkered down in some bunker somewhere with winds flying over our head of about a buck 20 or 130- miles-an-hour -- Carol.
COSTELLO: So, tell us your best guess as to when this thing will hit Florida.
MYERS: Well, that's a really hard question to answer, because there is a large eye wall, if it regenerates. It's still is the center, of course.
But there's also the east side and the west side. This thing is hitting Florida -- and I can't use my hands because I have a microphone in my hand. It's hitting Florida at such an acute angle that the west side of the eye wall -- I'll put it this way so you can tell this is the east coast of Florida. The west side of the eye wall will literally hit the coast possibly four or five hours before the other side of the eye wall does.
The eye wall turns and turns and turns. And as we get the west side, it could hit Fort Pierce.
The other side of the eye wall, the bad side of the eye wall, could be all the way up there on the Cape, and that would be four or five-hour period.
Now, if it goes a little bit farther to the west, it doesn't go that far to the north, the eye wall will actually make landfall quicker.
But it's better, I guess, at some point to just have that hurricane do this.
COSTELLO: We can certainly understand your hand gestures. Good sign language.
MYERS: Yes.
COSTELLO: Yes, we do hope it does exactly that.
MYERS: All right, talk to you soon, Carol.
COSTELLO: All right, thank you, Chad. We'll get back to you.
We have to talk some politics now this morning. Fresh from accepting his party's nomination for re-election, President Bush campaigns in the battleground state of Pennsylvania today.
During his acceptance speech, the president laid out his political agenda and blasted his opponent.
Let's head live to CNN's Bob Franken. He is outside Madison Square Garden this morning.
Good morning -- Bob.
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.
And the convention is in the process of leaving the mean streets of New York. The barricaded streets of the New York are slowly becoming un-barricaded again.
The president, of course, is in Pennsylvania. But last night he made sure that, as he was giving his acceptance speech, he took some really healthy shots at his political opponent, John Kerry.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: After supporting my education reforms, he now wants to dilute them. He opposes legal and medical liability reform. He opposed reducing the marriage penalty. He opposed doubling the child credit. He opposed lowering income taxes for all who pay them.
Wait. To be fair, there are some things my opponent is for.
(LAUGHTER)
He's proposed more than $2 trillion in federal spending so far, and that's a lot even for a senator from Massachusetts.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FRANKEN: Carol, do you remember that tradition of the opposing party being quiet during the other's convention? Well, as they would say in New York, forget about it. John Kerry took some really healthy shots in Ohio right back at the president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have five words for America: This is your wakeup call!
(APPLAUSE)
And I want to sum up -- let me sum up my response to the president's speech in four words: All hat, no cattle.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FRANKEN: And while we all try and figure out what that means, what all of this means is that the campaign is now officially under way, as if it hasn't been for an awfully long time -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Bob Franken reporting live from Madison Square Garden.
We have more breaking news to tell you about out of Russia, as I understand. Ryan Chilcote live on the videophone once again.
Ryan -- what can you tell us?
RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we've had an upsurge in the fighting here. It's coming very close to people fleeing. We've heard grenade-launcher fire. We've heard small-arms fire. It is coming from the vicinity of the school, and it is moving in this direction. It looks like one of the hostage-takers may be trying to fight their way out of the school area.
But very, very close, small-arms fire, and it's quieted down a bit. Small-arms fire and grenade-launcher fire. Probably hand-held grenade launcher is what it was coming from very close to where we are right now. We're about 200 meters from the school, about 100 meters from the perimeter of the school's grounds.
This all began about an hour and a half ago. What you're seeing in front of you is where parents have been gathering. Oh, we just had a very -- another very large explosion. That was a grenade launcher at a minimum. And we have Russian attack helicopters overhead.
Now just to back up and explain to you how we got to where we are, it all began about an hour and a half ago. I'm going to try and slide in here. It's been a bit chaotic. It all began about an hour and a half ago with two large explosions. That was followed by some very sustained gunfire that went on for about an hour. Then Russian forces moved in to the building.
And what we understand now, it looks like what happened is at a certain point earlier in the day Russian forces agreed with the hostage-takers that they would be able to recover some bodies. There were seven bodies of -- seven Russians lying in front of the school, seven bodies out there.
And finally, the Russians were able to get permission from the hostage-takers to collect those bodies. They went out there to collect those bodies. And it was at that moment that the gunmen that had been inside the school started to make their way out of it.
A small group of children started following them. The gunmen inside the school opened fire on them. And then we had 45 minutes to an hour of sustained gunfire. It continues. Russian forces say they're in charge of the school. They're in complete control. But they're not in complete control of this area, because this area is still under fire.
COSTELLO: Ryan Chilcote bringing us up-to-date from Russia.
As we say, some children have managed to escape. We do not know as of yet how many children are still inside that school. We do know that members of the Russian military are inside the school, as well as some hostage-takers. And the atmosphere in there must be quite dangerous, to say the least.
We want to take you live to London right now and talk to Paul Slaughter. I'm going to get his -- he is the CEO of Task International, a security consultant firm.
Welcome to DAYBREAK. And thank you for being here.
PAUL SLAUGHTER, TASK INTERNATIONAL: Hi. Hello there.
COSTELLO: As you've been watching this unfold, in your mind, what exactly happened? We don't know who started with the firing. We don't know if it was the Russian military or the hostage-takers inside the school. From your perspective, how did this go down?
SLAUGHTER: It is very difficult to say without actually being there. But what happens in these types of situations, the hostage rescue team -- in this case, the Alpha team from the Russian Special Forces -- have gone in ostensibly to try and retrieve the bodies.
You have two options there. One is to retrieve the bodies and try and get as much intelligence of what's going on inside, and then come back and report, and then that all goes into the formulation of the actual assault plan. Or you have an opportunity whilst you're attempting to retrieve the bodies to go in and effect hopefully a successful assault.
But until everything quiets down and there's a full debriefing and report, no one is really going to know for sure what actually precipitated this final assault.
COSTELLO: We heard Russian attack helicopters overhead. And we've heard small-arms fire. We've heard rocket grenade launchers being fired from inside the school. And the Russian government said it didn't want to storm the school, but apparently that is what happened. Did the Russian military have any choice?
SLAUGHTER: Again, we can't really comment on that, because we don't know the precise circumstances. In situations like this, there has to come a time where negotiations will cease, will fall down. And the only other option is to storm the building. Obviously that's what's happened here. Whether something precipitated that, whether there was either an explosion inside the school or some of the hostages, some of the children were shot and killed, we won't really know that until the final debrief comes out.
But in circumstances of a hostage rescue, there has got to be a moment in time where the decision is taken, we're going in now. And once that decision is taken, you can't pull it back. You've just got to go and try and effect the most successful conclusion that you possibly can.
COSTELLO: And just to complicate matters, so many children are inside. We saw them running from the school. How does that -- well, we would suppose that would complicate the situation a lot.
SLAUGHTER: It complicates the situation probably not on the actual technicalities of the assault. But it certainly complicates it in the psychological processes of the team going in, because they will either have their own children, they've got brothers, sisters, cousins, relatives of the children of the age in the school. And this always plays on your mind. Whereas when it's adults, although you're concerned with their safety, they're not uppermost in your mind. But when it's children, that's a totally different ballgame.
And the psychological pressure, not just on the commanders, the people who made the decision -- probably President Putin in this case -- but the commander on the ground and the actual troops going in, that psychological pressure of trying not to harm any of the children. But, of course, on the other hand, you've got to try and kill the terrorists, because that's what they're going in for.
It's a very, very difficult balancing act, and even more difficult in this situation than in the U.K., the Iranian embassy siege or other situations like that. It's a very, very difficult situation, and the psychological pressure is immense.
COSTELLO: Paul Slaughter, security analyst, joining us live from London this morning, thank you so much for being with DAYBREAK.
We want to bring in our own security analyst right now. Mike Brooks has joined us on the set. And have you been watching this morning, just dramatic, incredible pictures we've been showing people?
MIKE BROOKS, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: It really has been. And early on, Ryan Chilcote was reporting that apparently they had negotiated to remove the bodies from in front of the school, and that apparently something broke down during that process.
And I can tell you as a former hostage negotiator and as a former operator that during times like that, it's very, very tenuous, because you have to make sure that the negotiators relay the exact information to the people on the inside what they're going to see, what's going to happen.
But again, it could have been a problem of trust. There has been -- as part of negotiation there is trust-building. And you need to develop a dialogue.
Now, we know back in October of 2002 when negotiations were ongoing and a dialogue had been established and they were trying to build some trust when they pumped in poison gas.
So, I'll all be anxious to find out, Carol, at the end, after all of this is over with, exactly what precipitated the shooting from inside the school.
But yesterday all day, we heard gunfire from inside the school. There were some RPGs that were fired at a couple of cars outside of the school as negotiations were ongoing. So, whatever precipitated the action from inside the school, I'd be very anxious to find out.
COSTELLO: And to complicate matters, according to Ryan Chilcote, so the Russian military goes to remove the bodies, and then the hostage-takers opened fire. And then right behind them, a group of about 30 children run from the school. And then more hostage-takers in the school open fire on the children.
BROOKS: It's just a terrible, terrible situation. But you had, they said, somewhere between 16 and 20 hostage-takers, and you had, they were talking, upwards of 1,000 people inside, very, very hard to manage.
Back in the late '70s I was involved in a situation where we had 144 hostages at three locations over three days. And one of the reasons they decided to go ahead and let them go is they couldn't manage all of the people. The restroom facilities weren't sufficient. There weren't supplies.
So, I can't imagine what was going on inside that particular school.
COSTELLO: You got that right. And as we saw the children fleeing from that school live this morning, most of them were in their underwear. Nobody can quite figure that out, whether it was because of the heat inside the school...
BROOKS: Right.
COSTELLO: ... because it's about 90 degrees there now. Or was it because the hostage-takers forced them to take their clothes off for some unknown reason?
BROOKS: Who knows? And it could be because of the heat. They supposedly had rounded everyone up and had them in the gymnasium there in the school. Or it could be because the hostage-takers wanted to make sure that no one was hiding anything. They couldn't bring something in if they had been able to slip someone in among the 1,000 hostages. Who knows exactly why they did that?
COSTELLO: The other complicating factor in this -- and we saw a photojournalist shot this morning, too, live on the air, very disturbing pictures. Lots of small-arms fire coming from every which way. Parents are all congregated around this school. That's got to be difficult to deal with for the Russian military as well.
BROOKS: It really is. The crowds outside, especially not knowing, not getting any information at all from inside on what exactly is going on. It just seemed like a total chaotic scene from the very, very beginning of this siege and with the military there. They did have trained hostage negotiators.
The Federal Security Service, the FSB, and the Interior of Ministry, the Ministry of Interior there in the country are trained. In fact, they're trained by the FBI here in the United States, which runs basically the top hostage negotiation school in the world.
And they also had brought in some intermediaries, most likely because there had been so much bad blood between the Chechens and the Russians -- the Soviet government for so many years. They brought in a kind of disinterested third party, if you will. They had a local leader there, who actually had negotiated yesterday the release of the 26 women and children.
Then you also had a doctor who they had brought in that the Russian government had approved of, and the Chechens had to ask for, because he apparently had been involved in the negotiations back in October of 2000 during the Moscow theater takeover.
So, it sounded like things were going along OK. And anytime you get hostages released, that's a good sign.
But, again, what happened this morning, we don't know. They were removing the bodies, gunfire from inside the school. It seems like the -- and then children running out. Maybe the Soviets went ahead and made an emergency assault. They decided that it was time to do that. I'd be very anxious to see exactly what happened.
COSTELLO: Yes, for some reason -- I know. For some reason all hell did break loose around that school. And...
BROOKS: It did. It really did.
COSTELLO: But we do understand that some children did manage to escape. We don't know how many children are still inside that school. We do know the Russian military is inside the school right now, and we do know at least five of the hostage-takers have been killed.
Ryan Chilcote reported earlier that 10 people have been wounded, including a 17-year-old boy. And, of course, we saw that photojournalist shot on the scene there.
We're going to have much more from Russia and much more for you when DAYBREAK returns.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COSTELLO: And before we end our show, we want to get one last update from Rob Marciano in the forecast center about Hurricane Frances, where exactly the storm is and when it might hit.
(WEATHER BREAK)
COSTELLO: You've been watching DAYBREAK. I'm Carol Costello along with Chad Myers and Rob Marciano. "AMERICAN MORNING" starts right now.
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Aired September 3, 2004 - 06:37 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: We have to talk about Hurricane Frances right now. She is still out there in the Atlantic Ocean, and it's one huge storm, the size of Texas. Frances has been downgraded to a category 3 storm.
Right now, we have Rob Marciano in the weather center. Chad Myers is in Melbourne, Florida, this morning.
Let's start with Rob and the track the storm.
(WEATHER BREAK)
COSTELLO: It's so funny, Chad, to look at the weather behind you. It looks so beautiful in Melbourne, Florida, this morning.
CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: It is, Carol. But the winds just gusted to 30, and we're so far away from this eye, and the winds have been picking up all morning long. When we got here at 5:00 it was 20; now it's 30.
You know, and if we keep doing this every couple of hours, we're actually going to be in the 60 to 70-per-mile range here pretty soon. I would say at least by maybe the noon or 2:00 hour we're going to start to feel tropical-storm-force winds, not quite hurricane-force winds today yet or at least this afternoon.
But, yes, the sun is coming up over the horizon. It looks beautiful. There were a couple of thunder clouds out there, a lot of lightning and thunder to our south. It kind of did drift on back down south, probably down to around Fort Pierce right now, one of the final -- the way, way outside outer bands.
But it's going to go down here rather quickly, and eventually by tomorrow morning we're going to be hunkered down in some bunker somewhere with winds flying over our head of about a buck 20 or 130- miles-an-hour -- Carol.
COSTELLO: So, tell us your best guess as to when this thing will hit Florida.
MYERS: Well, that's a really hard question to answer, because there is a large eye wall, if it regenerates. It's still is the center, of course.
But there's also the east side and the west side. This thing is hitting Florida -- and I can't use my hands because I have a microphone in my hand. It's hitting Florida at such an acute angle that the west side of the eye wall -- I'll put it this way so you can tell this is the east coast of Florida. The west side of the eye wall will literally hit the coast possibly four or five hours before the other side of the eye wall does.
The eye wall turns and turns and turns. And as we get the west side, it could hit Fort Pierce.
The other side of the eye wall, the bad side of the eye wall, could be all the way up there on the Cape, and that would be four or five-hour period.
Now, if it goes a little bit farther to the west, it doesn't go that far to the north, the eye wall will actually make landfall quicker.
But it's better, I guess, at some point to just have that hurricane do this.
COSTELLO: We can certainly understand your hand gestures. Good sign language.
MYERS: Yes.
COSTELLO: Yes, we do hope it does exactly that.
MYERS: All right, talk to you soon, Carol.
COSTELLO: All right, thank you, Chad. We'll get back to you.
We have to talk some politics now this morning. Fresh from accepting his party's nomination for re-election, President Bush campaigns in the battleground state of Pennsylvania today.
During his acceptance speech, the president laid out his political agenda and blasted his opponent.
Let's head live to CNN's Bob Franken. He is outside Madison Square Garden this morning.
Good morning -- Bob.
BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.
And the convention is in the process of leaving the mean streets of New York. The barricaded streets of the New York are slowly becoming un-barricaded again.
The president, of course, is in Pennsylvania. But last night he made sure that, as he was giving his acceptance speech, he took some really healthy shots at his political opponent, John Kerry.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: After supporting my education reforms, he now wants to dilute them. He opposes legal and medical liability reform. He opposed reducing the marriage penalty. He opposed doubling the child credit. He opposed lowering income taxes for all who pay them.
Wait. To be fair, there are some things my opponent is for.
(LAUGHTER)
He's proposed more than $2 trillion in federal spending so far, and that's a lot even for a senator from Massachusetts.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FRANKEN: Carol, do you remember that tradition of the opposing party being quiet during the other's convention? Well, as they would say in New York, forget about it. John Kerry took some really healthy shots in Ohio right back at the president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have five words for America: This is your wakeup call!
(APPLAUSE)
And I want to sum up -- let me sum up my response to the president's speech in four words: All hat, no cattle.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FRANKEN: And while we all try and figure out what that means, what all of this means is that the campaign is now officially under way, as if it hasn't been for an awfully long time -- Carol.
COSTELLO: Bob Franken reporting live from Madison Square Garden.
We have more breaking news to tell you about out of Russia, as I understand. Ryan Chilcote live on the videophone once again.
Ryan -- what can you tell us?
RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we've had an upsurge in the fighting here. It's coming very close to people fleeing. We've heard grenade-launcher fire. We've heard small-arms fire. It is coming from the vicinity of the school, and it is moving in this direction. It looks like one of the hostage-takers may be trying to fight their way out of the school area.
But very, very close, small-arms fire, and it's quieted down a bit. Small-arms fire and grenade-launcher fire. Probably hand-held grenade launcher is what it was coming from very close to where we are right now. We're about 200 meters from the school, about 100 meters from the perimeter of the school's grounds.
This all began about an hour and a half ago. What you're seeing in front of you is where parents have been gathering. Oh, we just had a very -- another very large explosion. That was a grenade launcher at a minimum. And we have Russian attack helicopters overhead.
Now just to back up and explain to you how we got to where we are, it all began about an hour and a half ago. I'm going to try and slide in here. It's been a bit chaotic. It all began about an hour and a half ago with two large explosions. That was followed by some very sustained gunfire that went on for about an hour. Then Russian forces moved in to the building.
And what we understand now, it looks like what happened is at a certain point earlier in the day Russian forces agreed with the hostage-takers that they would be able to recover some bodies. There were seven bodies of -- seven Russians lying in front of the school, seven bodies out there.
And finally, the Russians were able to get permission from the hostage-takers to collect those bodies. They went out there to collect those bodies. And it was at that moment that the gunmen that had been inside the school started to make their way out of it.
A small group of children started following them. The gunmen inside the school opened fire on them. And then we had 45 minutes to an hour of sustained gunfire. It continues. Russian forces say they're in charge of the school. They're in complete control. But they're not in complete control of this area, because this area is still under fire.
COSTELLO: Ryan Chilcote bringing us up-to-date from Russia.
As we say, some children have managed to escape. We do not know as of yet how many children are still inside that school. We do know that members of the Russian military are inside the school, as well as some hostage-takers. And the atmosphere in there must be quite dangerous, to say the least.
We want to take you live to London right now and talk to Paul Slaughter. I'm going to get his -- he is the CEO of Task International, a security consultant firm.
Welcome to DAYBREAK. And thank you for being here.
PAUL SLAUGHTER, TASK INTERNATIONAL: Hi. Hello there.
COSTELLO: As you've been watching this unfold, in your mind, what exactly happened? We don't know who started with the firing. We don't know if it was the Russian military or the hostage-takers inside the school. From your perspective, how did this go down?
SLAUGHTER: It is very difficult to say without actually being there. But what happens in these types of situations, the hostage rescue team -- in this case, the Alpha team from the Russian Special Forces -- have gone in ostensibly to try and retrieve the bodies.
You have two options there. One is to retrieve the bodies and try and get as much intelligence of what's going on inside, and then come back and report, and then that all goes into the formulation of the actual assault plan. Or you have an opportunity whilst you're attempting to retrieve the bodies to go in and effect hopefully a successful assault.
But until everything quiets down and there's a full debriefing and report, no one is really going to know for sure what actually precipitated this final assault.
COSTELLO: We heard Russian attack helicopters overhead. And we've heard small-arms fire. We've heard rocket grenade launchers being fired from inside the school. And the Russian government said it didn't want to storm the school, but apparently that is what happened. Did the Russian military have any choice?
SLAUGHTER: Again, we can't really comment on that, because we don't know the precise circumstances. In situations like this, there has to come a time where negotiations will cease, will fall down. And the only other option is to storm the building. Obviously that's what's happened here. Whether something precipitated that, whether there was either an explosion inside the school or some of the hostages, some of the children were shot and killed, we won't really know that until the final debrief comes out.
But in circumstances of a hostage rescue, there has got to be a moment in time where the decision is taken, we're going in now. And once that decision is taken, you can't pull it back. You've just got to go and try and effect the most successful conclusion that you possibly can.
COSTELLO: And just to complicate matters, so many children are inside. We saw them running from the school. How does that -- well, we would suppose that would complicate the situation a lot.
SLAUGHTER: It complicates the situation probably not on the actual technicalities of the assault. But it certainly complicates it in the psychological processes of the team going in, because they will either have their own children, they've got brothers, sisters, cousins, relatives of the children of the age in the school. And this always plays on your mind. Whereas when it's adults, although you're concerned with their safety, they're not uppermost in your mind. But when it's children, that's a totally different ballgame.
And the psychological pressure, not just on the commanders, the people who made the decision -- probably President Putin in this case -- but the commander on the ground and the actual troops going in, that psychological pressure of trying not to harm any of the children. But, of course, on the other hand, you've got to try and kill the terrorists, because that's what they're going in for.
It's a very, very difficult balancing act, and even more difficult in this situation than in the U.K., the Iranian embassy siege or other situations like that. It's a very, very difficult situation, and the psychological pressure is immense.
COSTELLO: Paul Slaughter, security analyst, joining us live from London this morning, thank you so much for being with DAYBREAK.
We want to bring in our own security analyst right now. Mike Brooks has joined us on the set. And have you been watching this morning, just dramatic, incredible pictures we've been showing people?
MIKE BROOKS, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: It really has been. And early on, Ryan Chilcote was reporting that apparently they had negotiated to remove the bodies from in front of the school, and that apparently something broke down during that process.
And I can tell you as a former hostage negotiator and as a former operator that during times like that, it's very, very tenuous, because you have to make sure that the negotiators relay the exact information to the people on the inside what they're going to see, what's going to happen.
But again, it could have been a problem of trust. There has been -- as part of negotiation there is trust-building. And you need to develop a dialogue.
Now, we know back in October of 2002 when negotiations were ongoing and a dialogue had been established and they were trying to build some trust when they pumped in poison gas.
So, I'll all be anxious to find out, Carol, at the end, after all of this is over with, exactly what precipitated the shooting from inside the school.
But yesterday all day, we heard gunfire from inside the school. There were some RPGs that were fired at a couple of cars outside of the school as negotiations were ongoing. So, whatever precipitated the action from inside the school, I'd be very anxious to find out.
COSTELLO: And to complicate matters, according to Ryan Chilcote, so the Russian military goes to remove the bodies, and then the hostage-takers opened fire. And then right behind them, a group of about 30 children run from the school. And then more hostage-takers in the school open fire on the children.
BROOKS: It's just a terrible, terrible situation. But you had, they said, somewhere between 16 and 20 hostage-takers, and you had, they were talking, upwards of 1,000 people inside, very, very hard to manage.
Back in the late '70s I was involved in a situation where we had 144 hostages at three locations over three days. And one of the reasons they decided to go ahead and let them go is they couldn't manage all of the people. The restroom facilities weren't sufficient. There weren't supplies.
So, I can't imagine what was going on inside that particular school.
COSTELLO: You got that right. And as we saw the children fleeing from that school live this morning, most of them were in their underwear. Nobody can quite figure that out, whether it was because of the heat inside the school...
BROOKS: Right.
COSTELLO: ... because it's about 90 degrees there now. Or was it because the hostage-takers forced them to take their clothes off for some unknown reason?
BROOKS: Who knows? And it could be because of the heat. They supposedly had rounded everyone up and had them in the gymnasium there in the school. Or it could be because the hostage-takers wanted to make sure that no one was hiding anything. They couldn't bring something in if they had been able to slip someone in among the 1,000 hostages. Who knows exactly why they did that?
COSTELLO: The other complicating factor in this -- and we saw a photojournalist shot this morning, too, live on the air, very disturbing pictures. Lots of small-arms fire coming from every which way. Parents are all congregated around this school. That's got to be difficult to deal with for the Russian military as well.
BROOKS: It really is. The crowds outside, especially not knowing, not getting any information at all from inside on what exactly is going on. It just seemed like a total chaotic scene from the very, very beginning of this siege and with the military there. They did have trained hostage negotiators.
The Federal Security Service, the FSB, and the Interior of Ministry, the Ministry of Interior there in the country are trained. In fact, they're trained by the FBI here in the United States, which runs basically the top hostage negotiation school in the world.
And they also had brought in some intermediaries, most likely because there had been so much bad blood between the Chechens and the Russians -- the Soviet government for so many years. They brought in a kind of disinterested third party, if you will. They had a local leader there, who actually had negotiated yesterday the release of the 26 women and children.
Then you also had a doctor who they had brought in that the Russian government had approved of, and the Chechens had to ask for, because he apparently had been involved in the negotiations back in October of 2000 during the Moscow theater takeover.
So, it sounded like things were going along OK. And anytime you get hostages released, that's a good sign.
But, again, what happened this morning, we don't know. They were removing the bodies, gunfire from inside the school. It seems like the -- and then children running out. Maybe the Soviets went ahead and made an emergency assault. They decided that it was time to do that. I'd be very anxious to see exactly what happened.
COSTELLO: Yes, for some reason -- I know. For some reason all hell did break loose around that school. And...
BROOKS: It did. It really did.
COSTELLO: But we do understand that some children did manage to escape. We don't know how many children are still inside that school. We do know the Russian military is inside the school right now, and we do know at least five of the hostage-takers have been killed.
Ryan Chilcote reported earlier that 10 people have been wounded, including a 17-year-old boy. And, of course, we saw that photojournalist shot on the scene there.
We're going to have much more from Russia and much more for you when DAYBREAK returns.
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COSTELLO: And before we end our show, we want to get one last update from Rob Marciano in the forecast center about Hurricane Frances, where exactly the storm is and when it might hit.
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COSTELLO: You've been watching DAYBREAK. I'm Carol Costello along with Chad Myers and Rob Marciano. "AMERICAN MORNING" starts right now.
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