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BeslanBeslan (Russian: Бесла́н) is a town located in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania of Russia and is the administrative center of the Pravoberezhny District. The population in 2002 was about 33,600, making Beslan the third largest town in North Ossetia behind Vladikavkaz and Mozdok. The town is located about 10 miles (15 km) north of Vladikavkaz, at . Beslan is an important railway junction, situated on the main line between Rostov-on-Don and Baku, and is the starting point of a branch line to Vladikavkaz. It is an industrial-agricultural town dominated by a large corn processing plant established in the 1940s. The town was founded in 1847 by migrants from elsewhere in Ossetia and was named Beslanykau ("the settlement of Beslan") after a local lord, Beslan Tulatov. In official use, though, the town was known after Tulatov's surname as Tulatovo or Tulatovskoye. It was renamed Iriston (Ossetia) in 1941 and in 1950, when the rapidly industrialising town was unified into a single municipality, it was renamed as Beslan. On September 1, 2004, Beslan's Middle School Number One was seized by armed militants. The siege ended on September 3 with a bloody shootout between the terrorists and Russian security forces. See Beslan school hostage crisis for more details.
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