Beslan Tragedy Causes Religious Row

(ANS) – Reactions to the school hostage siege in Beslan, South Russia, have resulted in a controversy between a Christian and a Muslim leader in Germany . Bishop Wolfgang Huber, chairman of the council of the mainline Protestant Churches in Germany , urged Muslims to denounce the attack by Muslim Chechen separatists and to distance themselves from all acts of terrorism. Huber: “Whoever takes children as hostages, attacks women, separates fathers from their families and brings death to hundreds of innocent people cannot claim to act in the name of God – any God.” Huber is the highest representative of nearly 26 million Protestants. The three-day hostage siege of a school in Beslan ended in a bloodbath. According to the latest figures 335 hostages – half of them children – were killed in a chaotic operation to liberate them from their captors. Some Christian families lost their loved ones.