Another controversy was the use of tank cannons, portable flamethrowers, and other weapons such as grenade launchers in Beslan, North Ossetia. On 3 September 2004, the local school was taken over by Chechen-led militants from Ingushetia, and was subsequently raided by the heavily armed FSB special forces of Alpha and Vympel.Uwe Klussmann, The Beslan Aftermath: New Papers Critical of Russian Security Forces, Spiegel Online, 27 August 2005.Yaroslav Lukov, Beslan siege still a mystery, BBC News, 2 September 2005.Yuri Zakharovitch, Should Russia Share Blame for the Beslan Massacre?, TIME, 31 August 2006. The operation was overseen by the head of the Special Purpose Center, Gen. Alexander Tikhonov, who forbade extinguishing the fire in the school,David Satter, Remembering Beslan: A crime against humanity., Forbes.com, 10.01.09. while the actual attack was personally led by Gen. Pronichev, and supported by tanks, armoured personnel carriers and attack helicopters. John McAleese, a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) team which had liberated the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980, immediately called it one of the worst hostage rescue attempts he had seen or heard about. The Beslan siege turned out to be particularly bloody, costing the lives of more than 333 people, including 186 children (age 1 to 17), 111 relatives, guests and friends, 17 school staff members and 10 Alpha members.Nick Paton Walsh, Frantic search for missing as Beslan begins to bury its dead, The Guardian, 6 September 2004. No ballistic tests were carried out, and prosecutors were not allowed to examine the special forces' weapons to determine who exactly killed the hostages.Madina Sageyeva, Beslan – The Search for the Truth Goes on, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 18 August 2005. In 2007, 447 survivors and relatives of victims of the Beslan massacre brought a complaint against the Russian government in seven applications to the ECHR.FIRST SECTION | Application no. 26562/07 | Emma Lazarovna TAGAYEVA and Others against Russia and 6 other applications (see list appended) | STATEMENT OF FACTS (ECHR document about the siege).
