Beslan - Students nervously returned to school here on Wednesday for the first time since hundreds of children and their parents were killed in a violent end to a mass hostage-taking at a Beslan primary school.
At Beslan's Number Six school, students filed past a police guard posted at the main entrance and armed with an automatic rifle while similar strict security measures were also in place at other schools in the southern Russian town.
"I wanted to come today," said Ilona Zandiyeva, a 10-year-old student at the school. "I am a little bit scared, but I miss school."
The three-day seizure of 1 200 hostages at Beslan school number one began on September 1, the first day of school for children in Russia, and teachers here said the delayed start to the school year would begin with a moment of silence in memory of the victims.
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"We cannot forget these events, and we have to let our kids know that life goes on in our little Beslan," said Lyubov Vaniyeva, a teacher at Number Six.
At least 339 people, half of them school children, were killed on September 3 when Russian security forces and armed locals stormed the school in response to an explosion inside the gym where the hostages were held without food or water.
Seven-year-old David Dzagoyev was nervous about starting school in the wake of the hostage tragedy, but when the doors opened he walked into his classroom and took his place at the first desk.
"He said he would go to school only if I came too," said his mother, Fatima.
"He was scared to come today, but what are you going to do? He has to study and he has to begin school sometime," she said.
At the Number Six school, only about one quarter of the school's 900 registered students returned on the first day, and many of those were accompanied throughout the day by their parents.
"Many parents will not let their children go to school yet," said Olga Kurgasova, whose eight-year-old daughter did return to class.
"They are afraid and they want to wait a while," she said.
The return to class in Beslan came after all schools in the town and its surrounding neighbourhoods underwent extensive security checks on Monday and Tuesday involving bomb-sniffing dogs and metal weapons searches.
The Beslan school hostage crisis also triggered an order to tighten security at schools throughout Russia, and the return to class of the children in Beslan was at the top of Russian television network news broadcasts Wednesday. - Sapa-AFP
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