FACTBOX - Russia Marks Day Of Mourning For Victims Of Beslan Terror Attack

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 03rd September, 2020) Thursday marks the Day of Solidarity in the Fight Against Terrorism in Russia, when the country mourns the victims of the Beslan terrorist attack, reaffirming its commitment to the struggle against all forms of terrorism.

This day is celebrated on September 3 under the Russian federal law of July 21, 2005. The date is timed to the tragic events of September 1-4, 2004, when over 300 people, mainly women and children, were killed in an unprecedentedly vicious terror attack in a school in the southern town of Beslan.

This day symbolizes the unity of the government and the public in countering terrorism.

On September 3, Russian people honor the memory of thousands of their compatriots who were killed by terrorists not only in Beslan, but in the Dubrovka theater hostage crisis in Moscow of 2002 (also known as the Nord-Ost siege), in the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis of 1995, Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye terror act of 1996, residential houses blasts in Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk of 1999 and hundreds of other terror attacks.

The last major terrorist attack in Russia took place in April 2017 in the second largest city of St. Petersburg. In the afternoon of April 3, an explosion hit a metro train inside a tunnel between the Sennaya Ploshchad and Tekhnologichesky Institut stations.

Another explosion at the Ploshchad Vosstaniya station was thwarted as the law enforcement timely detected an improvised explosive device. The terror act left 16 people, including the perpetrator, killed and over 90 others wounded.

According to Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, the threat of terrorism in Russia persists, as radicals continue to recruit people via the internet. In 2019, services stopped the spread of terrorist messages on 135,000 web pages, which is almost twice as many as in 2018.

Alexander Bortnikov, the director of Russia's Federal Security Service, said that in general, there is a tendency toward a decrease of terrorist crimes due to coordinated action by security authorities.

In 2019, Russian security services managed to prevent 50 terrorist crimes, according to him.

The Interior Ministry noted that 1,419 crimes of a terrorist nature and 524 extremist crimes were uncovered from January-July, 2020.

On September 3, state authorities, local governments, public associations hold political, cultural and sports events throughout Russia in order to commemorate the victims of terrorist attacks, as well as employees of special services and law enforcement officers who were killed in the line of duty.