Yet, I am still amazed at the incompetence of the Russians. They are a police state with controlled media but they can't seem to find their ass using both hands when it comes to fighting terrorism.

You would almost wonder if they invite incidents like this to give them an excuse for massive reprisal. If reprisals are horrendous the reaction of the ROW will be interesting.

But the reports portray the raid as a fastidiously prepared operation — in which militants used renovation work as a cover to plant arms and explosives in the school — almost literally under authorities' noses.

"Why the law-enforcement bodies didn't know and why they allowed a column of fighters to get into the city past all checkpoints — this is something that can be judged only through rumors," the newspaper Novye Izvestia said Monday.