Roj Bash Kurdistan

2004 jhadists killed 186 children 148 adults in a school

The entire world knows what jhadists are capable of

the Islamic State should never have been allowed to become so strong

The school siege at Beslan was the bloodiest act of terrorism ever to take place on Russian soil. Yet beyond this horrible truth remain many unanswered questions. There is no agreement on who the terrorists were. How many they numbered? Where they came from? How they got to Beslan? What they wanted? Whether they were all killed or captured? And just how the siege which began on September 1 2004, ended so catastrophically?

This Dispatches special uses testimony from eyewitnesses, survivors and security services. This is combined with video and audio archive footage presents the fullest account of what happened at Beslan.

The film examines the background to the events of Beslan. It also looks at the Russian state's reaction to the atrocity and the motivation of the hostage-takers. Beslan School Siege also documents how a small town is coming to terms with the loss of its children.

Beslan school hostage crisis

The Beslan school hostage crisis (also referred to as the Beslan school siege or Beslan massacre) started the first of September 2004, lasted three days and involved the capture of over 1,100 people as hostages (including 777 children),[5] ending with the death of 334 people.

The crisis began when a group of armed Islamic separatist militants, mostly Ingush and Chechen, occupied School Number One (SNO) in the town of Beslan, North Ossetia (an autonomous republic in the North Caucasus region of the Russian Federation) on 1 September 2004.

The hostage-takers were the Riyadus-Salikhin Battalion, sent by the Chechen separatist warlord Shamil Basayev, who demanded recognition of the independence of Chechnya at the UN and Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. On the third day of the standoff, Russian security forces entered the building after several explosions, using other heavy weapons.[6] At least 334 hostages were killed as a result of the crisis, including 186 children,[7][8] with a significant number of people injured and reported missing.

10 years on - how did the world not spot the signs as the Islamic State grew in savagery and power - had world leaders forgotten the horrors of the so recent past