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Outlook: A Beslan Mother's Impossible Choice

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Soldiers and security forces in front of the burning school  in Beslan, northern Ossetia on September 3, 2004.

29/12/2015 GMT

A Beslan Mother's Impossible Choice

BBC World Service - Outlook, A Beslan Mother's Impossible Choice

Aneta fled the 2004 school siege with her baby but left her elder daughter behind.

Aneta was taking her nine year old daughter to school for the first day of the new term when Chechen rebels took more than one thousand people hostage in Beslan, North Ossetia.

Aneta was caught up in the Beslan school siege in 2004. She was taking her nine-year-old daughter Alana to school for the first day of the new term and also had her one- year-old baby Milena with her. Soon Aneta was forced to make an agonising choice between them, a choice which still haunts her now.  We also hear from news camera woman Alina Gracheva, who covered the siege and went on to make a film about Aneta's story. 

Sona Jobarteh is the first female virtuoso on the kora, also known as the West African harp.  She came into the Outlook studio to demonstrate her kora playing skills with a traditional piece of music, Mali Saajo.

Over the years, K Chinnappa has played a crucial part in creating an aura around India's famous Bollywood film stars by hand-painting the huge posters that dominate cities and towns across the country.  He explains why he is one of the last of his kind. 

Dr Amy Dickman is a British woman with a passion for African lions.  She knew from a young age that she wanted to dedicate her life to big cats and ended up living in Namibia and more recently Tanzania, where she set up a community lion conservation initiative alongside local tribes. She tells Matthew Bannister about her life-long love affair with lions.

Image:  Soldiers and security forces in front of the burning school  in Beslan, North Ossetia on September 3, 2004.    Photo credit: Yuri Tutov / AFP / Getty Images

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