Beslan tragedy

As if I wasn't depressed enough already with all the coverage of the hurricane, I happened upon a documentary on HBO tonight about the Beslan tragedy, which occurred a year ago this past weekend. It was so compelling that I ended up watching the whole thing. For those of you who don't know about this event, it involved a group of 30 armed terrorists taking 1,300 people hostage at a school in the town of Beslan in the southwestern part of Russia. It occurred on the first day of school, so not only were students and teachers present, but also many parents, younger siblings, and relatives. The siege lasted 3 days and in the end 29 of the terrorists and 344 civilians died. The documentary provided a summary of the events interspersed with interviews with children who had survived the tragedy. They were all so young (between I’d say 7 and 12) and it was just depressing to think what they had been through. Most of them lost friends and many of them lost family members. In the last part of the documentary they focused on how the kids were doing now. There was so much anger, which is obviously understandable. Many of them talked about what they would do to the terrorists if they ever saw them again. It is just heartbreaking that these kids have to be filled with so much rage at such a young age.