‘In the name of the children, we should have gone to any lengths, any lengths at all. We failed them’

THOUSANDS of mourners carrying flowers filed into a gutted school gymnasium and then to a cemetery where rows of graves bore children’s names and pictures yesterday.

They were commemorating the anniversary of the hostage tragedy that claimed 331 lives.

Policemen lined the streets of the small town in the southern Russian region of North Ossetia and mourners had to go through metal detectors to reach the schoolyard.

As Russian Orthodox priests in flowing black robes chanted prayers, some mourners placed thin wax candles and stuffed animals on the remnants of the gymnasium walls.

Waves of sobs could be heard inside the gymnasium of Beslan’s School No 1, where more than 1,100 hostages had been forced to sit amid bombs rigged around the hall, enduring thirst, hunger and terror.

People walked slowly along the periphery, stopping to examine large portraits of the victims - more than half of them children - that were hung on the walls, as the morning sun peeked through the shattered roof.

Many covered their faces in grief.

Others shook raised fists at the photos, as if pleading with the dead.

A large red banner decorated with white doves and the names of children around the world hung on the walls of the school and the gaping holes left by the windows were stuffed with bouquets of flowers.

The sound of a bell tolling was broadcast through loudspeakers, followed by mournful music.

The assault - which began a year ago yesterday and lasted three days - by masked, heavily-armed guerrillas stunned Russia and prompted President Vladimir Putin to make sweeping political changes.

Outside the school, grief boiled over into rage when the former principal, Lidia Tsaliyeva, tried to enter the school yesterday morning.

Some in the crowd shouted “Murderer!” and moved toward her menacingly.

Police and security guards surrounded her and spirited her away, fearing violence from people who remain convinced that she somehow co-operated with the hostage-takers - an accusation she vehemently denies.

At the specially built cemetery on the edge of town, the newly laid gravestones of Beslan’s more than 330 victims glistened under the sun.

Between the rows of graves, mourners sat, clad in black, their heads bowed with sorrow.

Galina Dagueva has come to visit her daughter Karima’s grave.

Gently, she places bottles of fizzy drinks on the gravestone - a symbolic gesture to alleviate the thirst that tortured the hostages for three days.

Karima, a girl with silky black hair, was 16 when she died in the school siege.

Nearly a year has passed since then. But time has not eased Galina’s grief.

“Our children were killed. Now we know the price of happiness and the price of unhappiness.

“It’s been a year already, but it feels as though it was yesterday. The pain is still as strong,” Galina said.

Alexandr Venger is a Moscow psychologist who has been following former hostages and their families in Beslan since the tragedy.

He says the entire town is still traumatised by the siege.

“Even if people can be found who don’t have any relatives among the hostages, they are nonetheless in a state called ‘secondary trauma’ - they were affected by the general atmosphere.

“The whole city is in continual mourning. Everyone in the street is dressed in black, there are continual funerals: that, in itself, has a strong effect. We were very severely affected ourselves,” Mr Venger said.

Of the children who survived the siege, only a few have been able to fully resume their schooling.

Mr Venger says these children will need at least three years of work with a psychologist to overcome the shock of what they experienced.

But the people of Beslan also say they need to hear the full truth about the massacre before they are able to move on.

Many victims’ relatives have accused the government of mounting a cover-up.

Critics have sharply questioned how more than 30 heavily armed attackers could have made their way to the school undetected.

An internet posting attributed to Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev, who has said he masterminded the attack, claimed that Russian security services enabled the hostage-takers to travel unhindered through the region and that a Russian double agent had been among them.

So far, the authorities have failed to provide a clear account of the chaotic standoff between the hostage-takers and Russian special forces, which ended the siege, and in which most victims died.

Many questions remain unanswered: How did the battle begin?

What started the blaze that caused the gym’s roof to collapse, crushing, and killing many of the hostages?

How did the attackers manage to reach Beslan along some of the country’s most heavily guarded roads?

Tears roll down the cheeks of Izrail Totoonti, a middle-aged man who helped carry out victims from the school’s smouldering ruins, as he recounts the horror.

But his grief quickly gives way to anger.

Like most people in Beslan, he is incensed at the authorities’ refusal to negotiate with the hostage-takers, who were demanding Chechnya’s independence.

“Those [terrorists] who went there, they are bastards, man-eaters. But in the name of the children, of their lives, we should have gone to any lengths, any lengths at all. We failed them. And the greater one’s power, the more he is at fault. We are all to blame. They are not here anymore, and we are alive,” Izrail said.

Izrail, like other witnesses, is convinced that Russian forces used flame-throwers and tanks to attack the school during the rescue operation, even though hostages were still alive inside.

Authorities have vehemently denied the claim.