Russia commemorates this Sunday the 20 years since the hostage taking carried out by an Islamist commando in a school Beslánin the Russian Caucasus, which ended in a massacre in which 334 people dieds, of which 183 were boys.
On September 1, 2004, back-to-school day, a armed group composed of about 30 Chechen and Ingush extremists entered School Number 1 in the town of Beslan, in the Russian republic of North Ossetia, and kidnapped more than 1,000 people, including parents, teachers and students.
During These people were held for more than 50 hours in appalling conditions, deprived of water, and several of them were executed. On September 3, A double explosion inside the school gymnasium It caused panic, with children trying to escape under fire from the kidnappers.
These explosions, whose origin has not been fully determined, prompted Russian special forces to launch a chaotic assault that ended in a bloodbath: 334 dead, including 186 children, and more than 750 injured.
People take part in a march in memory of the victims of the Beslan massacre REUTERS/Sergey Pivovarov
The deadliest attack in Russia
This attack, the deadliest in Russian history, occurred in the context of the second Chechen war, which pitted the Russian army against against a separatist rebellion that had progressively become IslamizedThe conflict eventually settled in Moscow’s favour, amid accusations of tens of thousands of civilians being killed.
The Beslan attack marked the high point of the atrocities committed in the framework of the two Chechen wars (1994-1996 and 1999-2009). poor management of this crisis and the almost complete absence of negotiations They sparked protests led mainly by the Committee of Mothers of Beslan, which in 2005 succeeded in getting the head of the republic at that time to resign, Alexander Dzassokhov.
In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that the Russian authorities had taken “insufficient” preventive measures and criticized a disproportionate use of force during the assault on the school.
The ECHR ordered Moscow to pay more than three million euros to 409 plaintiffswounded former hostages and relatives of the victims.
A woman remembers the victims of the Beslan school massacre REUTERS/Sergey Pivovarov
Putin’s first visit
On August 20, Russian President, Vladimir Putin, who was already in powerAt the time of the attack, he visited the school for the first time and compared this massacre with the ongoing Ukrainian military offensive in the Kursk region.
“Just as we fought terrorists, today we must fightto fight those who commit crimes in the Kursk region“in Donbas,” he said, resuming his argument about the “denazification” of Ukraine.
Earlier this year, Russian authorities also accused kyiv of having played a role in the attack on Crocus City Hall concert hallon March 22, near Moscow. The attack, the bloodiest in Russia since Beslan, left 145 dead and hundreds injured.
The attack was quickly claimed by the jihadist organisation Islamic State (IS), but the Russian authorities continued to see the hand of kyiv and its Western allies, who categorically denied any involvement.
