The Beslan school siege was a terrorist attack that started on 1 September 2004. It lasted three days, and involved the imprisonment of more than 1,100 people as hostages, ending with the deaths of 334 people, 186 of them children, as well as 31 of the attackers. It is considered the deadliest school shooting in history.
Image: Beslan zdanie shkoly 1
Image: Krest v zale shkoly Beslana
Hundreds of hostages packed into the school gym with wired explosives attached to the basketball hoop (a frame from the Aushev tape)
Masked hostage-taker standing on a dead man's switch during the second day of the crisis (a frame from the Aushev tape)
Beslan is a town and the administrative center of Pravoberezhny District of the Republic of North Ossetia–Alania, Russia, located about 29 kilometers (18 mi) north of the republic's capital Vladikavkaz, close to the border with the Republic of Ingushetia. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 36,728, making it the third largest town in the republic behind Vladikavkaz and Mozdok.
Railway station in Beslan