Russia Mourns Beslan

Today is the first anniversary of the Beslan school carnage where 331 people died after being taken hostage by Chechen rebels on September 1, 2004.

CNN reports:
"Piercing wails cut through the air as grief-stricken residents of this southern Russian town held a moment of silence Saturday, a year to the day after hundreds of their relatives and neighbors died in a hail of gunfire and explosions that ended a horrific school hostage crisis.
[...]
By the time the clock struck at 1:05 p.m. (0905GMT), the time of the first explosion that announced the bloody end to the three-day hostage crisis, at least 4,000 people had squeezed into the courtyard outside the Beslan school gymnasium where the victims endured terror, thirst and hunger.
As a bell tolled, children released 331 white balloons into the air to symbolize the souls of the dead. The moment of silence was broken by a wave of wailing that rippled through crowd, and at least one woman collapsed.
"They died here, they were burned here, their souls are still here," said Alona Bistayeva, 42, standing in the line of dazed-looking people waiting to file through the gymnasium to pay their respects. "It's a process of farewell, and of not forgetting. A person forgets this, and all of a sudden it happens again."
From the school, the crowd moved to the cemetery, where thousands watched the consecration of a soaring new memorial while weeping women tended their relatives' graves.
As bells tolled over loudspeakers, a short poem was read out and then a list of all 331 victims that took 25 minutes to read. Some people wept; most bowed their heads.
Then, a wave of sobbing swelled from crowd as a white sheet was pulled off the 8-meter (25-foot) statue of four women holding up a tree of angels.
White doves released into the air circled over the crowd several times as mourners bent down and touched the earth on their relatives' graves with both hands.
In the Russian capital, where flags were flying at half-staff Saturday, a pro-Kremlin youth group planned a large rally off Red Square to mark the Beslan anniversary amid calls by state-run media for opposition forces not to try to take advantage of the tragedy to sow discord.
Earlier Saturday, Putin opened the weekly meeting of his Security Council with a moment of silence. He then announced that he had instructed prosecutors to send investigators to Beslan to verify the information he had been provided at a Friday meeting with members of a mothers' committee who have demanded that negligent or corrupt officials be prosecuted over the attack."