Toll from Russian School Shootout Passes 300

By Scott Simon,

Lawrence Sheets

Published September 3, 2004 at 11:00 PM CDT

The death toll from a shootout at a school in Beslan, Russia, rises to more than 300, and is expected to climb higher. Many of the dead are children who were held hostage by suspected Chechen militants.

Hundreds more were injured in Friday's bloody end to the crisis.

Russian troops stormed the school to confront the hostage takers, but it's unclear who initiated the final battle. Fire swept the school in the aftermath, leaving scorched corpses and many unanswered questions.

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Scott Simon

Scott Simon is one of America's most admired writers and broadcasters. He is the host of Weekend Edition Saturday and is one of the hosts of NPR's morning news podcast Up First. He has reported from all fifty states, five continents, and ten wars, from El Salvador to Sarajevo to Afghanistan and Iraq. His books have chronicled character and characters, in war and peace, sports and art, tragedy and comedy.

See stories by Scott Simon

Lawrence Sheets

Lawrence Scott Sheets concentrates on covering the Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union from his base in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. From 2001 to 2005, Sheets was NPR’s Moscow Bureau Chief, and covered the countries of former USSR, including Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia. Among major stories Sheets has covered for NPR have been the tragic siege of a school by a pro-Chechen separatist terror group in 2004 in which 330 mostly children were killed, the 6-week long "Orange Revolution" that brought down Ukraine’s old government in 2004, and the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia in 2003. Sheets has also reported for NPR from Iran and Afghanistan. He covered the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan during 2001 and 2002, including the bloody Taliban uprising at a fortress in Mazar e Sharif in which hundreds of people died.Sheets’ reports can be heard on NPR's , All Things Considered, Day to Day, and Weekend Edition.