Original subtitles

My name is Dariya Fadeeva.

I'm 16.

I live in Beslan.

And, uh, my sister was

one of the hostages in School Number 1.

I can't make sense of this.

More than 330 people died at this school,

and hundreds of kids were killed.

Everyone had someone in this school,

someone they knew.

This just touched everyone.

Everyone.

The world had never seen anything like this before.

That's Russian 9-11th.

That's what it was.

The suffering...

was just un-measurable.

And I was thinking of those people who could do this,

and I couldn't find the answer why did they do it.

Why?

I still can't find an answer.

Beslan was really friendly place.

Our town was, like, really special from others.

That isn't big, so everyone knows each other,

and that's, like, really nice place to live in

because there are so many nationalities and religions.

And they just...

We're all been so friendly to each other.

It was really happy place.

The first day of school, September 1,

is a celebration.

It's called "the Day of Knowledge."

Across Russia, parents come with their children,

bringing balloons and gifts for the teachers.

It's like a big deal in Russia,

and everyone is just waiting for this moment,

like, when the school starts.

That's also a big holiday for kids

who go to school first time in their life.

Dariya Fadeeva is a high school senior.

She spent her junior year in Euless, Texas,

just outside Dallas, as an exchange student.

When she went to Texas,

she left behind her 12-year-old sister Alia.

She was so energizing.

She used to write poems,

and she even made a little book.

Like, she edited it herself.

Like, she made a drawings for her poems.

On September 1, 2004,

a hot and sunny day,

Dariya helped Alia get ready

for her first day of sixth grade.

She was so excited to see her friends

and to see her classmates.

All summer, we were just preparing for this day.

Like, my mom was buying new clothes for Alia,

like, for that day.

And she was getting her hair done.

I was helping her with that.

She was beautiful.

I told her that I will see her after,

and I remember her walking downstairs,

and she went to school alone by herself.

Alia was heading to Beslan's School Number 1.

The school has been here for more than 100 years.

Classes include the first through 11th grades,

with nearly 900 students.

Hiding in the woods not far from Beslan,

some 30 men and two women

packed up an arsenal of weaponry

and also started heading to Beslan School Number 1.

We prepared songs about childhood,

about childhood ending

and a new stage of life beginning.

And at the start of this song,

the children were supposed to enter the school.

Elena Kosomova

is one of the school's most beloved teachers

and the vice principal.

She was in charge of the opening day ceremonies every year.

Her own nine-year-old son, Timor,

was beginning the third grade.

We prepare for the Day of Knowledge thoroughly

because first graders are coming to school

for the first time

and they will remember this day forever.

One of those first graders was Alana Zandarova.

It was the first time she had ever set foot inside a school.

Alana really wanted to go to school.

I wanted to hold her back till next year.

She's too little, only six years old.

But she said, "No. No, I'm going."

Alana's mother, Zalina,

brought her two-year-old son, Alan, along

to celebrate his big sister's first day of school.

My wife and I were very anxious,

and my hands were shaking with joy

because my little girl is starting school.

Sergei Urmanov's daughter, who is also named Zalina,

was excited as she headed to the ceremony.

My daughter was coming out of the school with her best friend.

Their birthdays were just five days apart.

And they were carrying a poster that said

"First Time To First Grade,"

and they had balloons in their hands.

And I took their picture.

While children gathered with their parents,

a large truck pulled up to this entrance

of Beslan School Number 1.

It was about 9:20 in the morning.

In this home video, we see the children

just before the ceremonies begin.

At that moment, I heard popping sounds

from behind.

Heavily armed men and women

with guns, grenades and bombs

entered the school through this door,

pushing parents, students and teachers inside.

A security guard and an off-duty policeman

were killed immediately.

Another group of terrorists ran into this courtyard

where hundreds of children and parents had gathered,

and all hell broke loose.

It was chaotic shooting.

They were shooting in the air.

When we were running towards the gym,

they were shooting in the ground.

I can't say that they were shooting at people

because I didn't see it.

There was terrible, terrible panic all around.

The shooting was intense.

Zalina Zandarova was also herded into the gym

with her two children.

When it all started, Alana asked me...

"Mom, is this how it usually is on September 1st?"

It was very scary.

I remember with fear

that after I saw the terrorists' faces

I thought, "No one will leave here alive."

Almost all the students from the upper grades

managed to run away

because for the ceremony they line up by the school gate.

It was the younger students who couldn't get away.

I went to see my mom at the hairdresser

where we were supposed to meet,

and I heard something like a popping sound,

but I didn't think anything of it.

And suddenly my mom ran out

and tells me that it was a siege of School Number 1.

They pushed me inside the school,

and they started chasing the children

towards the entrance.

I was trying to help children escape

by breaking windows

and pushing children outside.

I remember pushing my brother's wife

out through a window.

Then they forced us into the gym.

My wife was with me,

but we couldn't find our daughter.

I found my son jammed in a corridor next to the gym.

I managed to get hold of his hand,

pull him towards me,

and bring him into the gym.

He was crying, shouting,

asking what is happening, were they going to kill us?

That's what all the children around us were asking.

In the gym, we sat down.

They were rough with us,

pushing us with the butts of their rifles.

They announced that we were all hostages.

I saw about 16 people,

including two women suicide bombers.

These were the people that entered the gym and guarded us.

They kept talking about death,

saying that nobody will leave alive.

"We came here to die," they said,

"and you will die with us."

Word of the takeover quickly spread through Beslan,

a town of 34,000.

Local militia and armed citizens

immediately considered storming the school.

Almost everyone knew someone inside.

But terrorist snipers fired on anyone who approached.

Dariya Fadeeva ran towards the school with her mother.

At that moment, nobody really knew what was going on

and what happened to their children,

the same way as we didn't know what was happening with Alia.

And my mom was crying because my sister was at school alone,

and she was crying, why did she let her go alone.

And, like, a lot of times

I was thinking that I should be with her.

That's what I was thinking.

And, like, if they would let me go instead of her,

I would go.

Word of the terrorist takeover

also spread to Moscow a thousand miles away.

My name is Dmitry Beliakov.

I'm a freelance photojournalist.

It was also a very important day for me.

I've taken my own son into school.

And at the moment

when I was standing together with my wife

in a schoolyard of my school in Moscow,

I received a phone call.

My friend asked if I know the news.

He explained to me what happened,

and then I just immediately rushed home.

I rushed back home and started packing things.

I get into this airport.

It was a plane full of journalists

from all around the world.

I think that no one can understand

how is it possible to take children hostages.

There were more than a thousand people in the gym.

The heat outside was reaching a hundred degrees.

The heat inside the gym was horrible.

We were practically lying and sitting

on top of each other.

They took all of us men out of the gym.

And as one man tried to reassure the crowd,

they shot him in the back of the head.

They took us into the hallway,

putting one of us in front of every window.

Then we were told to barricade the windows and the doors.

They said if the barricades were broken,

the men who built them would be shot.

The terrorists waited until the job was done,

then shot a number of those men.

Next, they wired more than a dozen bombs in the gym

around and above the hostages.

Sergei Urmanov, an electrical engineer,

watched the process carefully.

In the basketball hoop, there were three bombs taped up,

and one up on the backboard

with wires leading to two more.

There were wires going to a pedal on the floor.

One of the terrorists always had a foot on it.

Detonation would occur if he took his foot off.

Alana asked me,

"What was hanging over there? Are those bombs?"

I said they were just cans, not bombs.

She asked me, "Why do they say it's going to blow up

if somebody touches the cans?"

I told her that they were just scaring us.

They warned us to be careful with the wires.

One bomb hung so low,

we touched it every time we went to the bathroom.

Once the bombs were set and the building secured,

the terrorists sent out a note,

naming four government officials they would negotiate with.

They also sent this threat:

"Wound one of us, we shoot 20 hostages.

Kill one of us, we shoot 50."

There was a huge crowd of people

standing across the street,

and they all wanted just to go through and just whatever.

Didn't matter for them,

like, if they're going to die or whatever.

They just wanted to go into the school

and be with their kids.

And we couldn't go any further

because we were stopped by the army tank

that was standing on this corner.

Within hours of the attack,

units of the Russian army started to arrive.

They were frustrated that civilians and local militia

seemed out of control.

Parents, family members, and the entire town

were desperate for news.

We just had to wait, and we couldn't do anything else,

and that was just killing us.

Like...

I thought it was like a nightmare.

Information was scarce,

and at times stunningly inaccurate.

Everyone in the crowd knew officials were lying.

It seems the Russian government

was trying to minimize the crisis.

I was absolutely sure there was more than a thousand.

Even counting relatives of people who've been waiting,

that couldn't be possible, 354.

In fact, there were nearly 1,200 hostages in the school.

If there was doubt about the number of hostages,

there was no doubt about the hostage takers.

Everyone knew they were Chechens.

They were telling us that they were fed up

with the war in Chechnya.

One of the terrorists said

that a Russian plane flown from our airfield

had killed his entire family.

Now he wanted to kill

and didn't care that it was women and children.

Chechnya is a neighboring republic

about the size of Connecticut that has been

in a war for independence from Russia for years.

The Russians have fought a bitter war,

taking heavy casualties,

to maintain control over the mostly Muslim republic.

Tens of thousands of Chechens,

including thousands of children, have been killed.

The Chechens have taken the war to Moscow,

killing hundreds in terrorist attacks,

including the infamous 2002 theater siege.

There, hostages secretly used cell phones

to communicate with police.

To end the siege, Russian forces

pumped sleeping gas into the theater.

More than 30 terrorists died,

but so did 130 hostages.

It was clear

no one was going to walk out of the school alive.

The Beslan attackers had learned from the theater siege,

breaking windo to ventilate the school

and keeping tighter control of their hostages.

When we were first ordered to hand over our cell phones,

we didn't throw them all away.

They knew not all the phones had been turned in, and said...

"If we find a phone on anyone,

we will shoot them... and shoot 20 others, too."

And then more phones were surrendered.

By the end of the first day,

photographer Dmitry Beliakov had arrived in Beslan.

I started chasing the special forces unit

which I was supposed to be imbedded with.

He found the Spetznaz,

special forces troops he was looking for.

Beliakov knew these men from covering the war in Chechnya.

As I was waiting for them,

I was, you know, running through

my pictures of my wife and my son

on this little display of a digital camera...

because just behind the wall there's a siege.

And I just was thinking,

"What would I do in such a situation?"

I don't know.

There was a storm. There was raining.

And I don't think there was a gunfire.

I don't remember any gunfire the first night

because of the rain that was so noisy.

Maybe there was. You couldn't hear it, though.

When the children fell asleep,

there would be some gunshots occasionally,

which made them shudder.

They asked me if someone had been killed.

I said, "No."

"Then why do they shoot?"

I said, "Sleep, and don't be afraid."

We thought that that's just not normal

to do these kind of things to kids.

So, we still hoped that they will just realize

what they're doing and let the kids out.

During that first night on the streets of Beslan,

there was still hope.

But inside School Number 1,

the hostages believed the terrorists planned

to kill them all.

I was thinking about one thing:

Let the end come soon.

When my children fell asleep, I would think,

"Let it happen to them before they wake."

It was September 2nd

when I found these guys

from Spetznaz I wanted to be with.

They had been located

in Radio Technical College,

which was on the opposite side from school,

just across the railway.

One is a Captain, the other a sniper...

two soldiers from Russia's special forces, Spetznaz.

Their identities must be kept hidden.

The terrorists were shooting sporadically.

Sometimes targeted fire,

sometimes just to let us know

that they are not asleep and are vigilant.

I knew there were at least 20 terrorists,

snipers, and some with machine guns,

and that there were many, many hostages.

Inside the school, the terrorists

also fired bullets into the ceiling...

...each shot reverberating through the crowd outside.

Mothers started crying way more.

Some people just got heart attack right here

from worry.

Lydia Tsaliyeva was celebrating

her 24th year as the school's principal.

From the beginning, she tried to reason with the terrorists.

They said, "Our demands have to be met,

and then we'll leave and not kill anyone."

I said, "What are your demands?"

They said, "They have to take the troops out of Chechnya."

So who were these terrorists?

A dramatic videotape surfaced

exposing an unseen side of the story.

It's a tape that begins on the morning of September 1st

in the home of Aksana Dzaporova.

This is her seven-year-old daughter Lynda.

Lynda was going to the first grade,

and my husband wanted to videotape her

going to school for the first time,

and videotape her friends, too.

But when the terrorists took control of the school,

they demanded hostages surrender not just cell phones

but also their cameras.

They told us to throw away all the cell phones and cameras.

My husband Aslan took the camera

and threw it in the pile.

Aslan's camera became the terrorists' camera.

After the siege ended,

the lost tape was discovered in the rubble

not by Russian investigators

but by local teenagers.

What is revealed is a look inside the school

through the terrorists' eyes.

This is Ruslan Khuchbarov.

Survivors say he was called "The Colonel"

and seemed to be in charge.

He was of medium height, stocky.

He had a sniper rifle of the Spetznaz type.

A calm, self-assured man.

The man you see here is on his way

to negotiate with The Colonel.

His name is Aushev,

Ruslan Aushev, a former general

and once president of the neighboring Russian republic

of Ingushetia.

He traveled from Moscow to negotiate with the terrorists.

I was met by two masked terrorists

who took me inside the school.

I saw this gym where the people were stuffed

like herring in a barrel.

It was a picture of people who knew they are about to die.

When he entered the gym,

there were whispers everywhere.

Aushev! Aushev!

He shook his head and left the gym.

It was very stuffy.

Almost all the children had stripped down.

There was a stuffy, sweaty smell.

No crying, but everyone understood

that it was all very serious.

There was horror in their eyes. I could see that.

He came in, looked at us.

He said, "I got it," and then he walked out.

Aushev and The Colonel talked

in a second floor teachers' lounge.

Lydia Tsaliyeva, the school's principal,

was summoned.

We've been waiting for so long.

We're very glad that you were the first to respond.

I know I shouldn't cry.

Aushev calms her, and then Lydia speaks to The Colonel.

I have one request for you.

For Lord's sake, for Christ's sake,

don't hurt a single child of mine.

The terrorist leader told Aushev

he was willing to negotiate for release of the hostages.

He pulled out a piece of graph paper

and showed me their demands.

There were seven or eight.

The main one was to stop the war in Chechnya.

It was a letter to President Putin

from Shamil Basayev.

Shamil Basayev, the most wanted man in Russia.

He is the acknowledged leader of Chechen terrorists,

the man behind the Moscow theater siege

and so many acts of terror.

The Russian government

has put a $10 million bounty on his head.

This video shows Basayev planning

with the Beslan terrorists

weeks before the attack on the school.

I've heard that on these Chechen Web site

Basayev said that he personally did it.

Well, what kind of scum is he, you know?

By attacking a school

and holding hundreds of children hostage,

Basayev hoped to shock the Kremlin

into ending the war in Chechnya.

On the found tape,

Aushev is given a tour by The Colonel.

They showed me 21 dead bodies

that were thrown out the second floor window.

These people were killed

during the initial takeover of the school.

I think they wanted to demonstrate their decisiveness.

In short, they were very serious.

They said, "Here are the demands."

And I asked them,

"Do you have any other requests?"

They said, "No.

"Here is this piece of paper. Go do it.

When you do it, we'll release the hostages."

But before he left,

Aushev was able to convince The Colonel

to release some hostages.

I said to the commander,

"I understand you have these demands,

"but it's not going to happen today or tomorrow.

At least let the babies go."

He just promised me they will release the nursing babies.

The nursing ones. Thank you very much.

Zalina Zandarova, in the gym

with her six-year-old Alana

and two-year-old Alan,

struggled to calm them.

Alan was constantly saying, "I want to go home.

I'm hungry. I'm thirsty."

He cried nonstop.

At first, when they allowed us to take the children out,

we were overjoyed,

and Alana was, too.

But at the entrance to the gym...

...another terrorist took Alana away from me

and told me to leave.

I said, "I won't leave.

I have a child here."

Zalina was forced to choose...

take little Alan out to safety and leave Alana behind,

She left with Alan.

Alana said,

"Ma, where are you going?"

When they grabbed her out of my arms,

she got scared and cried.

One by one, this procession of distraught mothers

left the building.

This is Zalina with Alan.

To leave a child behind,

it's beyond words.

One has to live through this.

Most of these mothers were leaving an older child behind.

One of those children can be heard down the hall.

"I want to go with Mama," she cries out.

Eleven women carried out 14 babies.

At the last moment, a terrorist handed another baby to Aushev.

The boy's mother couldn't leave her older child behind.

The last baby, I carried him myself.

I took the baby and walked out.

Aushev never returned to the school.

He was the only government official

to meet face-to-face with the terrorists.

I had great hope that we could continue negotiating

with the terrorists,

getting one or two people out of there at a time,

and to defuse the situation.

Everything changed after Aushev left.

They stopped giving us water.

They stopped us from using the bathrooms.

They turned aggressive.

They may also have turned on each other.

Among the hostage takers were at least two women.

They were impossible not to recognize.

They had long black coats on.

Only their eyes were showing.

They had suicide bomber belts and pistols.

They are called the Black Widows,

Shahidki, women who have lost family

in the Chechen War.

Witnesses have said the young women terrorists

hadn't been told that the school was the target

and were upset about taking children as hostages.

They began arguing between themselves.

We heard some shots.

The timing is not exactly clear,

but at some point during the siege,

of the women terrorists exploded.

It's incredible, you know.

She just blew up like a balloon full of blood.

The explosion was to my left. It was a big explosion.

After the dust settled, one of the terrorists

came over to me and said,

"Pick up the head."

I then noticed right beside me

was the head of one of the Shahidki.

He told me to put it by her body.

No one knows if the women committed suicide

or were killed by other terrorists.

After two days in the cramped and airless gym,

desperation set in.

The children ate the flowers that they had brought to school.

Always sharing with each other.

I took some soil from a flower pot,

squeezing water from it through my shirt.

One of them said to me,

"If you move again, I'll shoot you,

for you are interrupting my prayer."

When they quit letting us go to the bathroom,

they threw some empty plastic bottles for the boys to pee in,

and the girls went in spread-out clothes.

When the children and adults

couldn't stand it any longer without water,

some started drinking urine.

I felt nauseous and was almost fainting.

When I thought I was ready to drink it, too,

I told my son, "I could drink yours."

He did not believe me.

"Are you really gonna drink it, Mom?"

I said, "I will."

I began drinking from a bottle he had used,

covering my nose with my hand.

He was looking at me and then said,

"Mom, leave the last sip for me."

I couldn't eat, and my mom couldn't.

While this was happening, no one couldn't possibly eat

because they knew that their kids don't have anything to eat,

anything.

I was with my wife, my daughter,

my sister, and my nieces.

The youngest niece was diabetic.

On the second day,

she was close to a coma and couldn't talk.

She died the second night.

Morning. Everyone was crying, hysterical.

On the morning of September 3rd,

the terrorists put me down on my knees in the gym

and said that if I didn't calm down the crowd,

they would shoot me.

I tried calming them down.

I said, "Listen to me, or they are going to shoot us."

I remember morning of September 3rd.

It was like something in the air,

and we felt that something has to happen.

The morning of September 3rd

brought more agony for the hostages inside

and quiet suffering for those outside.

We couldn't do absolutely anything,

just feel helpless.

And you start thinking

how helpless people inside of the school are.

Nearly 50 hours had now passed.

That was such a horrible waiting,

when you didn't know what's going on.

I was only thinking that if the children won't be freed,

then mothers themself will go to school,

no matter what happens to them,

because mothers were thinking

their children are starving

and don't have any water.

Expectation and helplessness are the worst.

It kills you.

I just didn't believe

that I will see my girl alive and unharmed.

It would be easier for me to be inside the school

and see where they were shooting

than to listen to the gunfire from the outside,

trying to guess where they were aiming.

It seemed every shot we heard was aimed at the children,

at Alana.

I wish they did shoot me.

My little girl, Zalina, is smart beyond her years.

I said to her, "Soon the soldiers will come,

and we'll be okay."

My wife saw me about to pass out.

My wife is from God. She is my other half.

She took a book and fanned it over us.

The Spetznaz held their fire,

getting ready for a possible assault on the school.

We took our positions,

got organized, established communications.

Everyone felt a lot of responsibility.

We were positioned 50 meters from the school.

The whole left wing was our responsibility.

We were constantly soothing the children.

"We will be freed soon.

"The cars are already waiting for us outside.

It will all be fine."

But with the adults,

we just shook our heads.

And on the last day,

even we didn't have any hope left.

Some of the children seemed lost

and began to hallucinate.

My boy, Timor, could not sit still anymore.

He got up and said,

"I'm going to go to Grandpa's and drink water."

I got angry. "Are you serious?

Sit still!"

I was just praying

that my sister would be alive.

Although the terrorists and the government talked by phone,

the conversations led nowhere.

Aushev knew the demand for Russia

to pull troops out of Chechnya was impossible,

but he thought the Russian government

should agree to anything to free the hostages.

I have four children,

and I imagined, if my children were among the hostages,

everything should have been done to save these children.

Now in the third day,

hundreds of children were suffering

from severe dehydration.

Thousands of townspeople were demanding action.

The end begins with an explosion

inside the packed gym at 1:06 in the afternoon.

An explosion came out of the blue,

unpredictably.

It was very hard to describe.

In the first minute, everyone was in shock.

Within seconds, some hostages escaped.

Then, shouts could be heard...

shouts, wails, and groans.

We felt as if fire was poured all over us.

We felt ourselves thrown against the wall.

I fell on a body.

We all felt as if we were on fire;

so enormous was the heat that engulfed us.

I checked my arms and legs.

It seemed incredible that after such an explosion

they would still be in place.

Moments later, a furious gun battle erupted.

They just opened fire.

They started firing at the school.

When we saw all civilians

and all military moving toward the school,

we understood that something just is going wrong.

At first, I thought it was just another explosion.

But when I heard the machine gun volleys...

I figured something extraordinary was going on.

I prayed to God for the children to stay alive,

because only God could help them now.

But the fight was complicated by dozens of armed citizens

also trying to kill terrorists.

There were people dressed in shorts and flip-flops

with submachine guns.

The main mass of them was

an uncontrolled crowd of people with weapons,

gripped with emotions.

I wouldn't exclude that they might have shot some hostages.

Numerous explosions...

shook the school.

My daughter didn't have a scratch on her.

She asked me if Mommy was dead.

I laid my dead wife on her back.

I saw two large dead women lying at an angle...

and I tucked my daughter under them

and lay on top of her,

shielding her from subsequent explosions.

Heavenly kingdom to these women.

After the explosions,

there was a pile of dead children's bodies,

and then complete silence.

Among the smoke and carnage,

Elena lost sight of her son, Timor.

I couldn't locate him.

All the children looked the same.

I got up, all covered in blood from my legs.

My daughter was soaked in my blood.

I lifted my daughter,

stepped over guts, legs, bodies.

Then my daughter saw it all,

and I covered her face with my jacket

to prevent her from seeing more.

So many people just started running.

Mothers started screaming,

thinking that just all the kids are dead.

Stripped to their underwear because of the unbearable heat,

those children who could, ran.

After the second explosion,

I saw a lot of children climbing over the windowsill.

That gave me the idea to escape through the window.

With bullets flying, Elena ran across the schoolyard.

I saw some garages.

There were other women there with children.

I saw a woman fall down by the garages.

This woman was shot in her back,

right in front of my eyes.

Dmitry turned his lens towards Elena,

who was bleeding from a wound to the head.

The first people I saw were two men from our town.

They were armed. They told me to run over to him.

He helped me cross back to safety.

Still trapped inside, Sergei and his daughter

were ordered to move to the cafeteria.

And I went through the mess.

All those wounded... I couldn't help them.

God forgive me.

Terrorists surrounded themselves with hostages,

using them as human shields.

Then I got a piece of shrapnel in my back.

I was in a lot of pain, screamed,

and lost control of my daughter.

The bandits were shooting from behind the women and children

who were falling down, screaming,

"Don't shoot!"

Spetznaz troops started moving into the school.

My job was to give them cover.

The battle for Beslan School Number 1 went on for hour...

after hour...

after hour.

It was just so long.

I remember myself praying that moment.

And I remember all this noise and everything,

like, around me,

everywhere.

And that was just so scary.

That seems like it's a war or something like that.

And it seemed like there were thousands of terrorists

and they were everywhere.

Amid the chaos, Dmitry shot this series of pictures.

And you can see here nobody's moving.

It looks like everyone is dead.

And there was a silhouette of a child.

The young girl pulled herself up

and climbed back into the gym.

She should run away.

She should just go, and instead she crawled back.

Then there was a third explosion,

and then I just put my lens down because I just...

I couldn't continue taking pictures.

It was, I thought...

Well, this is... this is too much.

Look, this is too much.

I was sure that this was it for her.

I was sure that she has perished.

In a few minutes, the roof collapsed.

There weren't enough ambulances to carry all the wounded.

Children were rushed to hospitals by family car...

or in a loved one's arms.

It took nearly ten hours before the shooting stopped.

After the battle was over,

there were still two bastards maneuvering here.

And, you know,

the Spetznaz decided not to waste their people,

and they just called up for tanks.

And from over there, the tank just took them out.

One by one, the wounded and the dead were carried out.

Eighteen Spetznaz soldiers lost their lives in the fight.

Just beyond the school, families reunited,

sometimes in joy...

...but too often in despair.

For Dariya Fadeeva and thousands of others,

a desperate search began.

Room to room, corridor by corridor,

floor by floor,

from top to the bottom...

a massacre.

It was chaos. It was pain.

It was, um...

It was despair,

a hundred percent total despair.

People were calling each other.

"Have you seen my daughter?" "Have you seen my brother?"

"Do you know what happened to my son?"

When the battle ended,

the survivors and the dead scattered across Beslan,

to hospitals in neighboring towns,

and some even to Moscow for intensive medical care.

People would usually start going morgues.

There was one or two morgues.

So, they would start from there.

Then they would definitely run through the hospitals,

or just check anywhere

because some hostages who were wounded

were delivered Moscow, Rostov, other places.

And it was, again,

a bit of chaos.

Not everyone knew which hospital to search.

Someone said they've seen Alia somewhere,

in... in the hospital.

And we were looking for her,

like, asking doctors where could she be.

And no one... like, there was not anyone who knew.

And then, Dariya's cell phone rang.

Dariya.

And when I heard her voice, oh, God...

I mean...

that was just like...

like she's calling us from heaven or something like that.

I was... I don't know.

I mean, I can't express the feelings you have...

these moments.

Alia had severe shrapnel wounds

to her legs and back.

She was evacuated to Moscow

where she has undergone three surgeries.

She said,

"Inside, I just wanted to see you,

and I was praying to see you again."

Zalina went to the central hospital

looking for Alana,

but couldn't find her.

When I broke down in tears,

one of our relatives came up to me and said,

"Don't cry. Why are you crying?

She's alive."

I entered her ward, and I saw her lying on the bed.

She gave me a smile.

Alana had burns on her legs and back.

She escaped, aided by a man she didn't know.

When it all ended,

she said that a man, one of the terrorists,

had saved her.

He had told her to move because the fire was spreading.

He was soothing her and supporting her,

saying, "It's okay.

It will be over soon."

Alana and her mother are sure it was this man,

Nurpashi Kulayev,

the only terrorist known to have survived.

He was saying that he was gonna die anyway,

and that God will not forgive him

for what he was doing there.

For the Dzaparova family,

who lost their camera to the terrorists,

there was joy on the first day of school...

a proud father filming his daughter...

and then everything going so wrong.

My husband Aslan died the first day.

In fact, Aksana, his widow,

believes his dead body may have been filmed with his own camera.

Aksana's two children survived,

although Lynda was badly burned.

And what virtually no one except her husband knew

was that she was pregnant during the siege.

Their son Alec was born four months later.

Elena's son, Timor,

seen here in Beliakov photos,

managed to climb out the same shattered window as his mother.

When my friend told us to run to the other side,

I was scared,

but Timor was in such a strange state,

as if he couldn't hear.

He was to run first, and I was telling him,

"Bend down. Bend down."

But he could not hear me.

Maybe he had a concussion.

I grabbed him, trying to make him bend down

and run over to the other side.

Timor ran to safety,

covered in blood from others in the school.

His physical wounds have healed.

Emotionally, he is still on the mend.

The boy has grown up,

but life is also more difficult for him.

He's nervous.

He played only with toy guns,

playing war for one whole month.

After we published these pictures,

I started receiving e-mails from readers,

and they want us to find out the truth,

what happened to this particular girl.

We went through morgues,

hospitals,

lists of people missing, killed.

I made something like a hundred prints

of that picture where you can see her in the profile.

We put the print on TV, on the local television station.

Then we gave it to local newspapers.

Then, after an exhaustive search,

Beliakov was brought to a hospital room

where he was introduced to seven-year-old Aida Sidakova.

I show her the picture and I ask her,

"Is it you?"

She said...

She said, "Of course it's me." I said, "Are you sure?"

And I said, "Why did you do it?"

"Because I was looking for my mama."

Aida's mother did survive.

Well, I had a state of tear.

I had a state of tear,

and I felt myself very, very happy.

I just... I took her arm,

her little arm, and I just...

I kiss it.

I was very, very happy.

At the end of the battle for School Number 1,

Sergei Urmanov was fighting for life...

his own and his daughter's.

As I was carrying her, I fell several times.

My daughter asked me,

"Daddy, why are you falling all the time?"

She was such a chatterbox.

But as long as we were together,

she didn't worry about anything.

She trusted in me one million percent.

She knew that, as long as I'm near, all would be fine.

But after an explosion,

Sergei and his daughter were separated.

She was shot, and died.

He also lost his sister,

three nieces, and his wife.

At the remains of the school,

family members and townspeople

memorialized the suffering by leaving bottles of water,

hoping somehow to quench the victims' thirst.

The final toll was cruel.

Of nearly 1,200 hostages,

331 died,

176 of them children.

More than 500 others were wounded.

Twenty-six children are now orphans.

The survivors will never forget, nor forgive, the terrorists.

They are just animals

without reason or heart inside them.

They are not human.

The main lesson of Beslan

is that the problem of the Chechen republic

must be solved.

Until we solve this problem,

we have no guarantee that there will be no more terrorism.

We need to solve this problem as soon as possible,

and solve it politically

because this problem cannot be solved by force.

Russian President Vladimir Putin

flew down to the area the day after the siege ended.

He visited a hospital but not the school.

It is said the visit was so short,

the engines on his plane were kept running.

We elect the president, the deputies,

the governors, all levels of power.

We pay them to defend us.

If people died, it means we have all failed.

Today, in Beslan,

there is anger towards the terrorists,

but also toward the government.

Was their government incapable,

or worse, unwilling to save their children?

This experience has changed everything,

especially for Beslan.

This town is now associated with horror, with death.

And it's very hard to live after all this,

and it's going to get harder.

The people of Beslan have witnessed

the trial of the surviving terrorist

and seen government investigations,

but they believe their president isn't with them

and doesn't care to answer their questions.

After being separated for months,

Dariya traveled to Moscow to see her little sister.

She says she's doing fine,

but my mom says that she's having, like, headaches

and she's still really weak.

She grew up.

She became...

really different person than she used to be.

Alia rarely speaks about her friends.

Instead, she writes to them.

"I can't believe you're not here anymore.

"I can't believe that the light of your life has faded.

"You were so precious to me,

"and now you are gone,

"and we can't bring you back.

"How can it be true that you are really gone?

"I can't believe it.

"Because you were so young, you could live on and on,

"bringing joy and happiness to those closest to you.

"You really could.

"And now we can't bring you back,

"and I cannot fall asleep.

"You're in front of me

"with a smile on your face.

"And now I have this unbearable heartache

"and a wounded soul.

"And now I have this unbearable heartache

and a wounded soul."