text/Zhou Hongxin
September 1, 2004 is just an ordinary school season for many people, but for the students of Beslan No. 1 Middle School in the Republic of North Ossetia in southern Russia, it is a real deal No buckle nightmare. In the morning, more than 30 heavily armed Chechen terrorists drove most of the students, parents and teachers who had just attended the opening ceremony of the new semester into the school’s gymnasium and took them as hostages. They were placed in the gymnasium and surrounding areas. Explosives.
▲ The emotional parents of the armed students at the scene, due to their impulse, eventually turned the rescue operation into a melee, causing a large number of casualties
▲ The Russian army arrived at the hostage incident site
terrorists demanded the Russian government to stop immediately Military operations in Chechnya and withdraw from Chechnya and release the arrested Chechen armed personnel. Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately rejected the terrorist's request, but considering the safety of the hostages, he agreed to provide a safe passage for the terrorists to retreat after they release all the hostages. As the positions of the two sides were far apart, the negotiations failed to make any progress, and time gradually passed in the bargaining. At the beginning of September, the weather was still quite hot. The bodies of the deceased in the gymnasium had begun to decay. Thousands of hostages had to endure starvation, and their health was seriously threatened.
▲ Russian special forces snipers are in place during the Beslan hostage crisis. Note that the special forces soldiers in the lower right corner are holding periscopes. Due to concerns about the identity of special forces personnel, these photos were not released until 2017.
9 At about 1 pm on the 3rd, after negotiations, the kidnappers agreed to the relevant personnel of the Emergency Situations Department to enter the school to take away the hostage corpses. However, when the corpse truck entered the school, there was a sudden explosion in the gymnasium. Of parents think that terrorists want to start killing hostages, so they stormed the campus desperately in an attempt to save the hostages. The Russian special forces "Alpha" and "Signal Flag" who were on standby were caught off guard. After reacting, they rushed into the school. The terrorists started a melee with a large number of military police and armed parents who stormed into the school. In a small stadium The sound of gunfire, explosions, screams and calls for help rang out in chaos. In the melee, in order to save the children, members of the special forces took off their body armors and put them on the children regardless of their own safety, blocked the bullets shot by the terrorists with their bodies, and ran to safety with their children, so the special forces suffered. There were serious casualties. It was not until 9 o'clock that night that the Russian military and police completely occupied the entire school and rescued all surviving hostages.
▲ Special forces soldier who is loading bullets. Pay attention to the special helmet on his head. The
incident resulted in the death of 333 hostages, including 186 minors and 958 injuries, including 639 minors, 123 People were disabled, 26 children's parents were killed, 31 terrorists were killed and one was captured alive. And "Alpha" killed 5 people, including a major; "Signal Flag" killed 7 people, including a colonel and a lieutenant colonel, and before that, "Signal Flag" had been in combat operations for twenty years since its establishment. A total of only 4 people were killed.
▲Z12zAfter the hostage incident ended, hundreds of dead bodies were cleaned up one by one for their families to claim
▲ Beslan Incident Monument, a teddy bear symbolizing the child sits on a cloak, protected by a bulletproof jacket With the little bear and the special forces helmet
next to him, the Beslan crisis has become a lingering pain for the Russian special forces, but it has also contributed to the atmosphere of the same hatred of terrorism across Russia. In the subsequent battles, Chechen terrorist leaders Maskhadov and Basayev were killed by Russian special forces, and the pursuit of Chechen militants continued to this day, just on Friday, August 23, 2019. In the center of Berlin, Germany, a Chechen was killed. He served as a field commander in the Second Chechen War in 1999 and had a good relationship with the former Chechen President Mashadov. The murder suspect is 49 years old and is a Chechen RussianRoss citizen. It seems that this fight for a tooth will continue.
