Beslan residents: time fails to cure wounds

Today, all the day long residents of North Ossetia come to School No. 1 in Beslan to pay tribute to memory of the victims of the terror act of 2004. Five years have passed after the tragedy, but the grief has not expired, as residents of Beslan say.

Today, Beslan has started a three-day memory service with a ring of a bell at the ruins of the school. Exactly at 9:15 a.m. Moscow time, just like five years ago, a school ring could be heard, and people started laying flowers in the former school gym, where terrorists kept over 1200 hostages for three days. Over twenty five hundred persons gathered today in the school yard to commemorate the victims of the terror act.

Tereza Kokova was among the hostages with her two children and, fortunately, survived: "Every day we live in fear that it all can happen again. My children have never been in the gym for these five years. If this happens again, no guard or security will help."

Ermak Khuadonov, a resident of Beslan, says that the pain has not soothed, especially in those who had lost relatives here. "We just have to live on," he said.

The members of the All-Russian Public Organization "Voice of Beslan" have spent all the day long in the gym, waiting for arrival of someone from the federal authorities; however none of them appeared.

Residents of Volgodonsk, co-authors of the activists of the organization in drafting the bill on social protection of terror act victims, came to Beslan to support their colleagues.