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Beslan marks hostage tragedy
01/09/2005 20:39 - (SA)
Beslan - Bells tolled in Beslan on Thursday one year to the minute after Chechen gunmen seized a Russian primary school in a hostage crisis that left more than 300 people dead and which still reverberates around the country.
The bells rang at precisely 09:15 and were followed by Mozart's Requiem played quietly at the site of the attack where hundreds of people, victims' families and others, placed flowers in the ruins of the school's gymnasium where most of the victims died.
Streets in the area around the destroyed school were cordoned off by police and pedestrians were required to pass through metal detectors to enter the school grounds and walk outside the gymnasium, where photographs of the victims were posted on walls.
Another victim
A young woman who had been in a coma since the Beslan crisis, in which more than 1 100 people were taken hostage, died several weeks ago, bringing to 331 the number of victims killed in the tragedy, 186 of whom were children.
Thirty-one of the gunmen, who had demanded Russian troops pull out of Chechnya, were also killed when the three-day crisis climaxed in a fierce battle with security forces. A sole surviving hostage-taker is currently on trial.
The walls of the school were draped with red cloth decorated with white doves and people lay flowers and lighting candles beneath the photographs of their loved ones.
At the entry to the gym, water ran over two black marble plaques that frame the door in a "wall of tears" as local residents streamed into and out of the ruins of the building.
Three days of mourning
The leader of the North Ossetia province where Beslan is located, Taimuraz Mamsurov, and the Kremlin's special envoy to the North Caucasus, Dmitry Kozak, were both present at the school and the crowd there had swelled to over 1 000 people.
Beslan was the epicentre of a nationwide commemoration and as North Ossetia began three days of official mourning, events were also under way or planned in Moscow and other parts of the country.
State schools were to begin the academic year on Thursday under tight security and with a minute of silence in commemoration of the Beslan tragedy while President Vladimir Putin was expected to hold a meeting at the Kremlin on Friday with mothers who lost children in the massacre.
Also on Friday, opposition parties and human rights campaigners will hold a memorial ceremony in Moscow, at which they will condemn the conduct of Russia's anti-terror campaign and demand a more thorough investigation into Beslan.
On Saturday, mourners in Beslan will attend the inauguration at a cemetery where victims are buried of a monument entitled "The Tree of Life", which depicts the children of Beslan ascending to heaven.
In Moscow on Saturday, city authorities have called for a minute of silence to begin at 13:05, a year to the minute after an explosion in the school's gymnasium in which many of the victims died.
- AFP
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