Editing Second Chechen War (section)

===Terrorist attacks===
{{Campaignbox Second Chechen War terrorism}}
[[File:Beslan school no 1 victim photos.jpg|thumb|left|Photos of the victims of the [[Beslan school hostage crisis|2004 Beslan school hostage crisis]]]]
Between May 2002 and September 2004, the Chechen and Chechen-led militants, mostly answering to Shamil Basayev, launched a campaign of terrorism directed against civilian targets in Russia. About 200 people were killed in a series of bombings (most of them suicide attacks), most of them in the [[2003 Stavropol train bombing]] (46), the [[February 2004 Moscow metro bombing|2004 Moscow metro bombing]] (40), and the [[Russian aircraft bombings of August 2004|2004 Russian aircraft bombings]] (89). Two big kidnaps, the 2002 [[Moscow theater hostage crisis]] and the [[Beslan school hostage crisis]] in 2004, resulted in the deaths of many civilians. In the Moscow stand-off, FSB [[Spetsnaz]] forces stormed the building on the third day using an [[Moscow hostage crisis chemical agent|unknown incapacitating chemical agent]] that proved to be lethal without sufficient medical care, resulting in deaths of 133 out of 916 hostages. In Beslan, some 20 hostages had been murdered by their captors before the assault, and the ill-prepared assault (started hastily after explosions in the gym that had been rigged with explosives by the terrorists) resulted in 294 more casualties among the 1,128 hostages, as well as many losses among the special forces.