No. 3 Beslan (2004)
The Russian war with Chechnya was noted for its brutality. On September 1, 2004, it took another violent twist as armed Chechen militants stormed School Number One in Beslan, North Ossetia. Close to 30 militants armed with automatic weapons and bomb belts seized over 1,110 people, include over 700 children. They herded them into a sweltering gymnasium, denied them food and water, and ringed the school with explosives. Russian special forces and elite counter-terrorism units of the Kremlin’s FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, formerly the KGB) took up positions outside the school. President Putin had a firm policy not to negotiate with terrorists. Yet a botched rescue mission in a Moscow theater in 2002 (where over 125 hostages were killed by a poisonous gas pumped in by Russian security forces) had tempered the response in Beslan. Initial efforts were made to contact Akhmed Zakayev, a leader of the Chechen separatist movement based in London, to negotiate a settlement. Yet on the third day of the standoff as negotiations were underway, the terrorists inside the school set off explosives on the gym roof, causing it to collapse. Hostages began to stream out, and Russian OSNAZ special forces stormed in. A chaotic scene erupted, as Russian forces fought gun battles with the terrorists, and local, armed civilian bystanders entered the fray. When the dust settled, roughly 334 hostages were killed, including 186 children and 30 hostage takers. The exact numbers are unclear in large measure because of government censorship and misinformation. A mere three hours into the first day of the siege, state-owned television switched from news coverage to regularly scheduled programming. According to the Washington Post, “secrecy and obfuscation, tools of the authoritarian past, cast a chilling shadow over television news broadcasts.”
