Beslan, North Ossetia, September - thirteen years later: A photo and video report

It is for the twelfth time now that a new school year in Beslan, a town in North Ossetia, starts on the 4th of September [three days after it does elsewhere in the republic].

A heinous tragedy, nothing like anything in modern Caucasus history, played out in this town in 2004. On the first day of September that year, a group of terrorists descended on a local school, just as its pupils, their families, teachers and friends – 1 128 people altogether – were holding a ceremony celebrating the start of a new school year. They were forced into the school building and kept there without water and food for three days, before the Russian security services started to storm the building. As a result of the chaos that followed, 334 people were killed, including 186 children, and 783 others were wounded.

Since then, the first three days of autumn are when a variety of commemorative events are held in Beslan, and the whole of Ossetia joins in mourning as thousands flock to the destroyed School Number One to lay down some flowers, toys or bottles of water in memory of what the hostages had to endure.

Every year, at one point or another, North Ossetia has found itself discussing the possibility of formally moving forward the beginning of the school year for the whole of North Ossetia. Different public groups have repeatedly approached the republic’s government requesting the change. Many victims of the terrorist attack have called for it too.

In the meantime, the rest of North Ossetia has continued to hold celebrations marking the beginning of the new school year on the first of September.