Beslan (AsiaNews) Beslan residents are entering the competition for the monument in memory of the victims of the terrorist attack against School Nº 1 with their own plan, a design that includes an Orthodox church that incorporates the ruins of the old school's gym-theatre hall where much of the carnage took place.
Mairbek Tuaev, chairman of the Beslan Social Committee, said that victims' relatives and town residents have unanimously decided to submit a plan to the competition commission that would fully and tangibly maintain the "memory of the terrorist attack that cost the lives of hundreds of people".
Tuaev explained that the church would have a special feature. "The space under the central dome should be reserved for religious functions but what is left of the gym where the terrorists kept a thousand hostages should come under the secondary dome," he said.
The official application papers for the competition will be sent to Moscow within a week.
The Beslan Social Committee chairman, who himself lost a daughter in the siege, added that the residents' proposal is backed by Feofan, Orthodox Bishop of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz, capital of North Ossetia.
Construction work on the new Memorial complex should not however begin before September 1, 2005.
The Beslan Social Committee has in fact decided that the ruins of the school building should not be touched until the anniversary of the massacre.
From September 1 to the 3, 2004, a group of Chechen terrorist took over the school where they held more than a thousand people hostage. In its denouement, the crisis left about 400 people dead, including more than 150 children. (MA)