September 1–3, 2004
On the first day of school, a group of 32 Chechen and Ingush terrorists seized School Number One in Beslan, North Ossetia, taking over 1,100 hostages including 777 children. For three days the terrorists held children, parents, and teachers without food or water in a sweltering gymnasium rigged with explosives. On the third day, explosions triggered a chaotic rescue operation; Russian forces used tanks and thermobaric weapons against a building full of children. Of the 334 people killed, 186 were children. The massacre horrified the world and marked the moral nadir of the Chechen insurgency.
Commanders