Standoff at Russian School Continues

By Lawrence Sheets

Published September 1, 2004 at 11:00 PM CDT

Gunmen hold hundreds of hostages, many of them children, in a Russian school near Chechnya for a second day. President Vladimir Putin calls the action "horrifying" and says the lives of the hostages are his main priority. Twenty-six women and children were released early Thursday. NPR's Lawrence Sheets reports.

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Lawrence Sheets

Lawrence Scott Sheets concentrates on covering the Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union from his base in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. From 2001 to 2005, Sheets was NPR’s Moscow Bureau Chief, and covered the countries of former USSR, including Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia. Among major stories Sheets has covered for NPR have been the tragic siege of a school by a pro-Chechen separatist terror group in 2004 in which 330 mostly children were killed, the 6-week long "Orange Revolution" that brought down Ukraine’s old government in 2004, and the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia in 2003. Sheets has also reported for NPR from Iran and Afghanistan. He covered the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan during 2001 and 2002, including the bloody Taliban uprising at a fortress in Mazar e Sharif in which hundreds of people died.Sheets’ reports can be heard on NPR's , All Things Considered, Day to Day, and Weekend Edition.