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Russia marks 2 years since school nightmare
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 2, 2006
BESLAN, Russia - Teenagers in black T-shirts bearing the words "Anti-Terror" lined up Friday at the burned-out shell of School No. 1 to remember the 333 people, more than half of them classmates, who were killed in Russia's worst terrorist attack. Sobs echoed through the ravaged husk of the red-brick gymnasium, where terrorists on Sept. 1, 2004, herded 1,128 students, teachers and parents and rigged up bombs to start the three-day ordeal in the southern Russian province of North Ossetia. The seizure ended in a bloodbath after two powerful blasts rocked the school and security forces launched a chaotic rescue effort. Most victims were killed by the explosions and ensuing gunfire or burned in the blaze. At the cemetery on Beslan's outskirts, Batraz Misikov, a 14-year-old who survived when he was carried unconscious from the burning gymnasium, walked among the new gravestones, patting those of his dead classmates. "All those who were there are different people now," he said. "We lack words and emotions, there is only emptiness inside us."
[Last modified September 2, 2006, 01:09:01]
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