05 September 2004
The death toll in the worst terror outrage since 11 September rose well above 300 yesterday as President Vladimir Putin called the Russian school siege part of "a full-scale war" on the nation by international terrorists, and made a rare admission of weakness.
Mr Putin made a national TV address as hundreds of distraught people in the Caucasus town of Beslan pleaded with the authorities for information to help them find their loved ones, more than 24 hours after a three-day siege at Beslan's School Number One ended in bloodshed.
Inside the school yesterday, workers completed the grim job yesterday of clearing corpses from the gym where hundreds of children had been held for three days without food or water, surrounded by explosives.
Calling the siege a "grim reminder of the nature of the terrorists we face", US President George Bush told an election rally in Ohio: "We saw the horror of terror in Russia, and I can just imagine the heartfelt anguish of the mums and dads of those Russian kids."
The official number of people killed, according to the regional emergency situations minister, Boris Dzgoyev, was 323, including 156 children. Medical sources said more than 542 people, including 336 children, were in hospital after the crisis ended in explosions and gunfire, but officials have given contradictory accounts throughout. Some estimates put the death toll at around 360.
There was equal confusion over the number and identity of the hostage-takers. Mr Dzgoyev said that 35 men and women with explosives and weapons had been "eliminated" after the 10-hour battle, which erupted shortly after 1pm local time on Friday. His statement was in sharp contrast to claims by a senior prosecutor, who said there were only 26 terrorists, and all were killed. Earlier claims that three had been captured, and that three or four others had escaped, appeared to have been forgotten.
Who the hostage-takers were, and what they wanted, were similarly unclear. Officials were quick to link the attack to Russia's bloody war in neighbouring Chechnya, as well as to international terror groups, amid reports that at least nine Arabs were among the hostage-takers.
The rest of the article is here:
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe...p?story=558377
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