Word: beslan
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...scene at the new school is about as close to normal as you get in Beslan. A year on, the small North Ossetian town remains deeply wounded?and bitterly divided. Survivors are still struggling with grief and anger, physical and psychological pain. Vitriolic disputes have broken out between survivors and the families of those who died, with allegations of cowardice sprayed on walls and lives ruined by whispering campaigns. Lidia Tsaliyeva, the school's 73-year-old principal, has been a main target. Fellow hostages say she played a heroic role during the ordeal, but others have made her into...
...shock waves from Beslan are still felt far beyond the town. Many Russians were profoundly shaken by the television footage of dead and terribly injured children. And the Kremlin's failure to protect its people was another blow to President Vladimir Putin's image as a tough, take-charge leader. For Stanislav Kesayev, deputy speaker of the North Ossetian regional parliament and a critic of the Kremlin's handling of Beslan, the chaos surrounding the school seizure and the botched rescue attempt is symptomatic of the way Russian officials treat ordinary people as "cattle." "I teach law," says Kesayev...
...escape. One young girl recently burst into tears when she saw the old school from a distance. Many have lingering pain, both physical and psychological. Vika Kallagova, 14, still drops by the hospital occasionally for treatment of shrapnel wounds that have not fully healed. Like many children in Beslan, Vika?who escaped from the school with her 9-year-old sister, Olya?is introverted and reticent. "I never want to talk to a psychiatrist again," she says...
...Critics of the government investigations claim that officials?both from the Kremlin and Beslan?are saying as little as possible in the hope that the controversy over the botched rescue will fade away. A federal commission of inquiry, composed of members of both houses of the Russian parliament, said last September they would need six months to complete their work. The inquiry is still limping along, with little sign that it will be finished in the near future. Prosecutors investigating the case still have not been able to identify the bodies of 11 of the 31 terrorists who died...
...tank shells had been used, details that had previously been denied. Russian officials say these weapons did not cause the fire in the school, and tanks were called in only after all the surviving hostages had been freed. Kesayev, who was in the Russian emergency command center in Beslan throughout the crisis, also claims that the Kremlin deliberately failed to respond to an offer by moderate Chechen guerrilla leader Aslan Maskhadov (killed by Russian special forces in March) to negotiate the hostages' release. That assertion is supported by a former Russian official who was also in the Beslan command center...