The seizure of the school took place on September 1—the traditional start of the Russian school year, referred to as “First September” or Knowledge Day.[28] On this day, the children, accompanied by their parents and other relatives, attend ceremonies hosted by their school.[29] Because of the pupils and family members attending the Day of Knowledge festivities, the number of people in the schools was considerably higher than usual for a normal school day. Early in the morning, a group of several dozen heavily-armed separatist guerrillas left a forest encampment located in the vicinity of the village of Psedakh in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia, east of North Ossetia and west of war-torn Chechnya. The rebels wore green military camouflage and black balaclava masks, and in some cases were also wearing explosive belts and explosive underwear. On the way to Beslan, on a country road near the North Ossetian village of Khurikau, they had captured an Ingush police officer, Major Sultan Gurazhev.[30] Gurazhev escaped after reaching the town and went to the district police department to inform that his duty handgun and badge were taken away.[31]
At 09:10 local time, the rebels arrived at Beslan in a GAZelle police van and a GAZ-66 military truck. Many witnesses and independent experts claim that there were, in fact, two groups of attackers, and that the first group was already at the school when the second group arrived by truck.[32] At first, some at the school mistook the guerrillas for Russian special forces practicing a security drill.[33] However, the attackers soon began shooting in the air and forcing everybody from the school grounds into the building. During the initial chaos, up to 50 people managed to flee and alert authorities to the situation.[34] A number of people also managed to hide in the boiler room.[19] After an exchange of gunfire with police and an armed local civilian, in which it was reported one attacker was shot dead and two were wounded, the militants seized the school building.[35] Reports of the death toll from this shootout ranged from two to eight people, while more than a dozen people were injured.
The attackers took approximately 1,200 hostages (the number of hostages was initially downplayed by the government to merely 200–400, and then for an unknown reason announced to be exactly 354;[13] in 2005, their number was put at 1,128[14]).[7][36] They herded their captives into the school’s gym and confiscated all their mobile phones under threat of death,[37] and ordered everyone to speak in Russian and only when spoken to. When a father named Ruslan Betrozov stood to calm people and repeat the rules in the local language, Ossetic, a gunman approached him, asked Betrozov if he was done, and then shot him in the head. Another father named Vadim Bolloyev, who refused to kneel, was also shot by a captor and then bled to death.[38] Their bodies were dragged from the sports hall; this left a trail of blood visible in the video later made by the hostage-takers.
After gathering the hostages in the gym, the attackers singled out among the male teachers, school employees and fathers the 15–20 strongest adults they apparently thought might represent a threat, and took them into a corridor next to the cafeteria on the second floor, where soon a deadly blast took place. Apparently an explosive belt on one of the female bombers detonated, killing another female bomber (it was also claimed the second woman died from a bullet wound[39]) and several of the selected hostages, as well as mortally injuring one male hostage-taker. According to the version presented by the surviving hostage-taker, the blast was actually triggered by the “Polkovnik”, the group leader, when he set off the bomb by remote control to kill those who openly disagreed about the child hostages and intimidate other possible dissenters.[40] The hostages from this group who were still alive were then ordered to lie down and shot with automatic rifle by another gunman; all but one of them were killed.[41][42][43][44][45] The militants then forced other hostages to throw the bodies out of the building and to wash the blood off the floor.[46] A hostage named Aslan Kudzayev, who was forced to throw the bodies, escaped by jumping out the window; the authorities briefly detained him as a suspected hostage-taker.[38] Karen Mdinaradze, the Alania football team’s cameraman, survived the explosion as well as the shooting; when discovered to be still alive, he was allowed to return to the sports hall, where he lost consciousness.
