Foreword
On the morning of September 1, as children at School Number One in Beslan, Russia, ended start-of-academic-year ceremonies, a group of masked men and women stormed the grounds, taking more than a thousand students and teachers hostage.For the next two days, Russian troops and the hostage-takers engaged in a standoff, with the terrorists calling for a total Russian withdrawal from the neighboring province of Chechnya, in which a separatist war has raged for over a decade. The siege ended in tragedy; reports are that one of the bombs rigged in the school gym holding the hostages accidentally exploded. At least…
