London’s Sun is anything but a prestige newspaper, but it is editorially sound and its news coverage is often vivid and interesting. Today’s Sun has a series of stories on the Beslan massacre, here, here, and here, including a number of accounts by surviving hostages. Their stories are horrifying, as you would expect. For some reason, though, this one affected me the most:
A 15-year-old boy last night emerged as one of the siege heroes.
Kazbek Dzaragasov fled for his life with pal Sado Nazriyv, 16, when the terrorists burst in.
But the brave teenager turned back when he realised younger sister Agunda was still in her third-grade class. The siblings were last seen on Thursday by a freed woman who told Sado they were huddled together on the gym floor.
The Sun editorializes:
If 9/11 was stunning in its scale of slaughter, then Beslan was stunning for its callous barbarity.
After this, nowhere in the world can consider itself safe.
The revelation that ten of the hostage-takers were Arab mercenaries, not Chechen rebels, puts Russia in a state of war.
In a week, two jetliners have been blown from the sky, a Tube station has been blasted and now more than 150 are dead in a school.
The atrocities bear all the hallmarks of al-Qaeda, the authors of so much misery.
The White House was swift to condemn the
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