Beslan

School Number One in Beslan was holding its first-day assembly, when parents and grandparents come in with the children. Thirty-two armed men took about eleven hundred people into the gymnasium and wired it with explosive hung from the basketball hoops.

They were held for three days in September heat with no water. Children drank urine. Some were made to stand in the windows.

On the third afternoon two of the devices went off. The roof came down and the building caught fire, and then a chaotic assault began with tanks and thermobaric rockets while hostages were still inside.

Three hundred and thirty-four were killed. A hundred and eighty-six were children.

Local men had come with their own rifles on the first day and stood outside for three days; several were killed carrying children out. Firefighters arrived without adequate water. Ordinary people in cars drove the wounded to hospital in Vladikavkaz.

The gymnasium has been kept as it was found, with the roof beams open to the sky, and people leave bottles of water in it.