Spot News, 2nd prize
Yuri Kozyrev
Time
Time
05 September, 2004
Flowers on the wall of the destroyed gymnasium of School Number One in Beslan, North Ossetia. On 1 September 2004 a group of Chechen separatists occupied School Number One. They herded more than 1,000 teachers, parents and pupils into the school gymnasium, and set up bombs and booby traps to prevent any surprise attack, issuing a series of demands that included withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya and the release of prisoners. After two days of negotiations, bombs inside the school were detonated, in circumstances that were unclear, killing many hostages instantly. Russian special forces stormed the building. School Number One was liberated, but more than 330 people were dead, more than half of them children.
Yuri Kozyrev
Yuri Kozyrev was born in Russia in 1963 and has worked as a photojournalist for the past 20 years, covering every major conflict in the former Soviet Union, including two Chechen...
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