Week-ending 4 September 2020
The Beslan school siege (also referred to as the Beslan school hostage crisis or Beslan massacre) started on 1 September 2004, lasted three days, involved the imprisonment of over 1,100 people as hostages (including 777 children), and ended with the deaths of 334 people, according to the Wikipedia article on the topic.
The Beslan tragedy and its aftermath has also been in the news this week.
On Wednesday, 2 September 2020, Caucasian Knot reported that Fatima Dzgoeva, who received grave traumas during the Beslan school seizure, needs expensive treatment and rehabilitation abroad. Her relatives are unable to raise the necessary funds; while the federal budget fails to pay for the rehabilitation of Beslan terror act victims, the “Novaya Gazeta” newspaper writes. On September 1, 2004, terrorists took 1128 hostages in a gym of the Beslan school No. 1. The special operation to release the hostages was finished on September 3, 2004. As a result of the terror act, 334 people were killed, including 186 children, and other 810 people were injured. On July 14, Fatima Dzgoeva turned 26; 16 years ago she became disabled as a result of the terror act committed in the Beslan school. In two weeks from now, she needs to go to Germany for treatment, but her family cannot pay for it, says the article “Love Your Movement” by the “Novaya Gazeta”, published on September 1, 2020.
On Friday, 4 September 2020, Meduza reported that on 3 September the Russian state television network Rossiya 1 premiered a new documentary film by journalist Alexander Rogatkin about the 2004 terrorist attack against a school in Beslan. […] Much of “Beslan” is devoted to criticizing the theory that most of the hostages who died were killed by shelling from grenade launchers positioned atop a nearby building and not, as the Russian government claims, by the explosions of bombs planted by the terrorists.
