Some 20 masked persons dressed in black burst into the courtyard of the school in North Ossetia and threatened to blow up the building if troops stormed it.
Six people were killed in an explosion in the Russian Caucasus city of Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia. Russia has been grappling with a Muslim insurgency in the North Caucasus.
More than 100 were also wounded when a explosives laden truck was driven into a military hospital complex in Mozdok in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia.
Taliban attackers' brazen assault on a school in Pakistan's Peshawar city that claimed the lives of over 150 students on Tuesday has brought back chilling memories of a similar bloodbath in Russia in 2004 when Chechen rebels stormed a school.
Rediff.com presents a list of most gruesome terror attacks on schools through the years.
Films that amazed Aseem Chhabra at the El Gouna Film Festival in Egypt.
The brutal Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan assault has claimed 141 lives, including 132 school children, six terrorists and three armymen.
Top 20 images of all the events of the week that was.
'A collapsing Pakistan may well unleash its nuclear weapons as the last throw of the dice. With a nuclear arsenal of over 50 bombs, even a regional nuclear exchange can devastate the world.'
'Surely, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will not be able to pay or compensate the Russians for deployment and use of Russian men and equipment,' says Brigadier S K Chatterji (retd).