Beslan school hostage crisis

I will never forget how scared and sad I was, when I was in fifth grade of primary school. It all happened on the third of September. I watched a TV report about an attack on school in Beslan, town in Northern Ossestia in Russia. For me this was a really horrible disaster. I didn’t understand why terrorists took innocent children, if they were fighting with politics.

This attack was a three day hostage-taking of over thousand people which ended in the deaths of over three hundred of them. It began when a group of armed mostly Chechen terrorists took more than one thousand and one hundred people (including seven hundred children) hostage in primary school on the first of September. This school was one of seven schools in Beslan, a town of thirty thousand inhabitants. The school, located right next to the district police station, had about sixty teachers and more than eight hundred students. The first day of September is traditionally the start of Russian school year. It refers to the "First September" or the day of Knowledge. On this day, children with their parents and other relatives attend ceremonies hosted by their school. They would have stayed at home if they had known about the “trap” waiting for them. On Wednesday, early in the morning, the school was attacked by a group of terrorists. If I were there, I would be shocked and very scared. They released twenty six hostages on Thursday but they didn’t allow any food or water supplies into the school, which was surrounded by police forces. Special Russian forces were waiting outside. If they could come into the school, they would save them. But they couldn’t. Contact with the hostage-takers was finally resumed on Friday morning, the third day of hostage-taking. Children and other people could not drink any water or eat food for three days. In the evening the terrorists left all people out, but there were still three hundred victims, who were killed by Chechens. Almost two hundred of them were children, and hundreds were wounded. If they hadn’t got their food and water soon enough, there would have been even more dead people.

If only politicians and terrorist would know how to solve problems peacefully. I cannot understand why this thing happened, but I hope that this kind of terrible disaster won't happen again.