September 1 was the first day of school in the sleepy North Ossetian town of Beslan, which parents, teachers and children celebrate “The Day of Knowledge” by wearing their best clothes. Instead of a party with music and dancing, they stepped into a brutal nightmare. Clubbed and beaten into the school gym by Chechen militants, more then 1,200 civilians found themselves at the mercy of gun-toting fanatics prepared to abuse, torture, maim and kill them in pursuit of concessions from the Russian government, their ‘oppressors’. The screams and chaos that accompanied the initial shooting quickly settled into the groans of the wounded and whimpering of the children denied water, food and the lavatory. The toxic sweat of fear mingled with vomit and rotting corpses. The militants had moved swiftly to wire the school with explosives, and several were living grenades - suicide bombers anxious to make their mark with the world looking on and Russian Special Forces among the thousands of surrounding troops. Handfuls of hostages escaped, but catastrophe was inevitable. After 51 hours, Russian assault troops rushed the school using tanks, rocket-propeller grenades, flame throwers, helicopter gunshots and anti-personnel high explosives. As whole sections of wall collapsed on some of the hostages, bombs were triggers, and the school erupted. Explosions continued throughout a 12-hour gunfight, in which hostages were shot indiscriminately by their ‘rescuers’. With no fire crew and few ambulances to help, bystanders braved the inferno to get some of the hundreds of injured hostages to safety in private cars; 334 of their friends, neighbors and children were already dead. The majority of the deceased were children.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 21:36:07 +0000
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