Armed Russian policemen moved along a street near the Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters in Moscow, in mobile phone footage posted on December 19. In other footage, the sound of shots ringing out could be heard. A reporter for Current Time TV filmed police sealing off the area.
Three children look happy and healthy now with their grandparents in Georgia, but that's after living for a year with their mother in an Iraqi jail. Their father, an Islamic State militant, was killed in Iraq, and the Georgian government is still trying to bring her home.
Fifteen years ago, militants with ties to the insurgency in Chechnya stormed a school in Beslan, southern Russia, taking more than 1,200 children and adults hostage. For a brief moment, a mother and her young son were at the center of the crisis, as she volunteered to act as a messenger between the militants and Russian forces.
Some of the teachers who survived the Beslan massacre are still working, and still haunted by the days in 2004 when 334 people were killed in their school.
Russia’s Investigative Committee says two suspected members of the extremist Islamic State group have been “liquidated” in a security operation in central Russia.
