18:23, 1 September 2005

Beslan: one year later

When we were entering Beslan earlier today, the town seemed dead: there were no people on the pavements, a minimum number of vehicles on the roads, and silence in the air. A group of teenagers were hurrying to the school, holding mourning wreathes and flowers, wearing all dark, speaking quietly. It is 1 September, their day.

There were hollows, caused by fire, in the floor near the exit from the gymnasium. There, the fire had made the wooden planks black and somewhat curved. These "black spots" appeared in those places where human bodies had not protected the floor from fire set to it by the falling melting roof on 3 September 2004. There were so few such places in the gym so big in area.

A marble slab at an angle of about 45 degrees was put on both sides of the entrance to the former gymnasium. Clear water was running down the marble, a symbol of unceasing mothers' tears...

Terrorists 'were setting hostages against the government'
Beslan residents one year later

Author: Regina Revazova, CK correspondent