Beslan: In Memory and Mourning

It is the seventh anniversary today of the terrorist seizure of School No. 1 in Beslan. Remembrance ceremonies have been taking place in the North Ossetiyan town where during the storm by federal troops on 3 September 331 people died, over half of them children.

The school was seized during the “First Bell”, the festive event to mark the youngest children’s very first day at school. It is traditionally attended by parents and grandparents.

There were well over a thousand people at the school, not the very much smaller number claimed by the authorities.  When Moscow asserted that the terrorists were refusing to negotiate, the terrorists, in anger at what they said was another lie, refused to give the children held in the sports hall, water.  

The parents and other relatives of those who died have been trying for 7 years to learn the truth about the events of those days, why tanks and heavy artillery were used against a school, who set off the explosion that supposedly prompted the storm, etc.

The photo is from the Radio Svoboda Russian site