Grief-stricken town ends mourning period
SHOTLIST
Vladikavkaz
1. Exterior St George's cathedral UPSOUND: bells ringing
2. Interior cathedral with people at service
3. Candles and pictures on church wall
4. Priests at service
5. People at service crossing themselves
6. Women lighting candles
Beslan
7. Pan School Number One exterior
8. People filing in with flowers
9. View from window of school to people walking below
10. Former hostage Dzerassa Dzestelova, 12, inside former classroom writing remembrance message on school wall
11. School book
12. Dzestelova walking through destroyed school
13. Pan of destroyed gym interior with people standing in silence
14. Candles burning
15. SOUNDBITE: (Russian) Dzerassa Dzestelova, Former Hostage:
It's the first day I've come since the siege ended. I can't say what I feel. I can't describe what I feel.
16. Beslan cemetery, pan from the mourners near the grave to a group of priests
17. Zoom out from food which is traditionally given on the 40th day of mourning
18. Grandmother mourning
19. Flowers
20. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Bishop Feofan, Orthodox Church (Please note: Bishop only has one name):
Both in terms of common sense and Christian belief, violent revenge must not happen. If fighting starts, this field will not be enough to bury the dead.
21. Cemetery
22. Views of tents below built outside houses where victims lived to mark 40 days of mourning
23. Various eating and drinking inside tents
24. Mourners walking by tents
STORYLINE
Tuesday marked the end of the formal 40-day mourning period for the hundreds of victims of the Beslan, Russia school massacre.
Residents of Beslan and the regional capital Vladikavkaz attended services throughout the city.
At the school's destroyed gymnasium, mourners stood in silence at one such service.
Thin prayer candles were lit and small icons and photographs were propped up among flowers piled in the shattered room.
One of the attendants was 12 year old Dzerassa Dzestelova, herself a former hostage.
Tuesday was the first day she had visited the school since the end of the siege.
She managed to escape when the explosions began by jumping through a window.
Russian soldiers positioned at the corner of a building showed her to safety.
Four of her 15 classmates died.
On Tuesday Dzestelova returned to her former classroom and left a message to her lost friends.
In the gymnasium where the hostages were held, she was overwhelmed by her emotions.
Women's wails and sobs rang out around her.
In the streets surrounding the school, families set up tents with long tables and bonfires for mourning meals.
Mourning families could be identified by their men, wearing beards that they planned to shave at the end of the 40 days.
In Beslan's cemeteries, mourners took offerings of food and drink to the graves to consume symbolically with the departed.
Across Russia, priests read masses in Orthodox churches and cathedrals.
Regional politicians urged calm amid rumours that the end of the mourning period would bring a wave of revenge killings.
Some North Ossetians have vowed to seek revenge on the rival Ingush ethnic group to avenge the deaths of the nearly 340 people - more than half of them children - in the September 1-3 attack on Beslan's School Number One.
The hostage-takers, apparently acting under the orders of Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, included some Ingush.
Bishop Feofan of the Orthodox Church said that if such violence broke out, it would end in the deaths of many more people.
The Ingush, closely related to the Chechens, are predominantly Muslim.
Ossetians are overwhelmingly Christian and historically have had close ties with Russians.
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