Beslan school siege: 'Time doesn't heal at all'
Editor's note: In 2004, Chechen rebels took 1,200 children and adults hostage at a school in Beslan, southern Russia. Hundreds died in the subsequent three-day siege and military operation to end the crisis. CNN senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh covered the siege for The Guardian newspaper in Britain. He returns 10 years later.Beslan, RUSSIA (CNN) -- First there was the blast, and then as sight as surreal as it was ghastly. Dozens of children, naked bar their underwear, running barefoot into the village, peppered with blood, screaming.After three days agonizing, the siege to end the standoff at Middle School Number One, in Beslan, southern Russia, began with a huge explosion in the gym where dozens of militants had herded 1,200 children and parents. The explosives inside had been rigged up between two basketball hoops and the hostages lined the walls of the gym. One witness said the blast caused it to "rain meat" inside the gym.Those who could, ran. They fled between houses, stripped of their clothes because of the scorching heat they had endured in the glass-windowed gym, where many were forced to drink urine to hydrate, towards a village that had been holding its breath for over 50 hours.The hostage crisis in Beslan, and the bungled, reckless operation that the Russian military allowed to happen, was a defining moment in Putin's war in southern Russia.
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