Armed, desperate militants were holding hostages in a police station and a gift shop under the shroud of darkness; an armored personnel carrier fired at the station. This, officials said, was "a situation under control."
The violence that terrified the southwestern Russian city of Nalchik this week, leaving at least 108 people dead, was the latest example of how officials respond to calamity with slippery rhetoric, unsupported statements, confusion and apparent attempts to play down the seriousness of events.
The flow of information is far more open than during the Soviet period, when officials simply refused to report disasters such as airplane crashes or, as in the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion, admit to them late and underplay their severity.
But the hostage-takings, submarine sinkings and other troubles that have plagued the country in recent years all were marked by contradictory and incomplete reports that added to the events' anxiety.
When a mini-sub became disabled in August, navy spokesmen at first tried to minimize the incident, saying reporters should not dramatize it -- even as authorities were contacting Britain and the US to get emergency help.
The first statement that Nalchik was under control came less than three hours after militants launched coordinated attacks on police and security facilities. It was from Nikolai Lyapin, deputy media minister for the Kabardino-Balkariya republic where Nalchik is the capital.
"There is silence in the town. Calm pervades the government building," the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted him as saying. "Militants have not seized a single building or school."
Technically, this may have been true because the fighters were not in control of the buildings they had invaded, but clashes at several locations were continuing.
The "under control" assertion was repeated by Dmitry Kozak, the Russian president's envoy to the region, and then by Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Chekalin. The latter proclaimed that the siege would end within an hour -- a full day before officials announced it was finally over.
Chekalin also sidestepped questions on whether there were civilian casualties, saying "I would have known if we had any."
The Emergency Situations Ministry said on Friday that 18 civilians were among the 108 reported killed. Kozak was the first official to state publicly that militants were holding hostages in the police building. But when asked about the presidential envoy's statement, regional Interior Ministry spokeswoman Marina Kyasova denied that there were hostages.
On Friday, it became clear that at least 18 people were taken hostage -- and officials said an unspecified number of children were among them. Other conflicting official statements also were pronounced on Friday. Around noon, the republic's Prime Minister Gennady Gubin announced that "all points of active resistance have been put down." Some 90 minutes later, the regional president's chief of staff, Oleg Shandirov, said militants remained holed up in the prison's administration building.
The delayed announcement that there were child hostages darkly resonated with Russia's worst terrorist attack -- last year's seizure of a school in Beslan. In that case, officials sharply understated the number of hostages for more than a day, before stating amid increasing complaints from local residents that more than 1,000 people were being held.
What accounted for the conflicting statements in Nalchik could be just the confusion that naturally afflicts any outburst of violence. But critics of the Russian government point to what they call an endemic lack of responsibility among authorities, especially regarding the conflict-torn Caucasus region that includes Nalchik.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of