BESLAN, Sept 3: More than 200 people - dozens of them children - were killed and hundreds wounded on Friday as a result of the fighting here to end a standoff with militants holding hundreds of hostages, Interfax news agency reported quoting health officials.
Terrified children, some naked and others with bloodied faces, ran screaming for safety after a 53-hour ordeal at the hands of gunmen with bombs strapped to their waists. Machinegun fire rattled out and helicopters clattered overhead.
But hours after the storming, a top security official said some children were still being held and fresh explosions were heard in the area. An unknown number of the hostage-takers fled but officials said later three had been captured alive.
Burly soldiers grabbed the fleeing children and rushed them to waiting medics. Some had blood streaming from wounds. "I smashed the window to get out," one boy with a bandaged hand told Russian television. "People were running in all directions ... (The guerrillas) were shooting from the roof."
The children, many stripped to their underwear after two days without food or drink in hot and crowded conditions, gulped down bottles of water and waited in a daze for relatives as gunfire crackled round them.
79 BODIES IDENTIFIED: The regional head of Russia's FSB security service, Valery Andreyev, said 79 bodies had been identified so far from the bloody hostage saga in Beslan, in the North Ossetia region bordering Chechnya.
"The number of those killed in the terrorist act in Beslan could be far more than 150," Aslambek Aslakhanov, an adviser to President Vladimir Putin, told reporters. Up to 1,500 pupils, parents and teachers had possibly been in the school.
Witnesses saw about 20 dead children at a hospital morgue. The Emergencies Ministry said 646 people, including 227 children, were in hospital. "My friend is a teacher at the school but since the assault we have heard nothing about her ... We are going from hospital to hospital looking for her," said one man, who gave his name only as Vladimir.
Russian authorities said they had been forced into an unplanned rescue operation when the hostage-takers opened fire on fleeing children. Moments before the battle erupted, officials said they had sent a vehicle to fetch the bodies of people killed in Wednesday's seizure of the school. "No military action was planned. We were planning further talks," said Mr Andreyev.
10 ARABS KILLED: Mr Andreyev said security forces had killed 20 of the gunmen, including 10 Arabs, adding fuel to Russia's contention that Chechen rebels are backed by foreign Islamic militants. The hostage-takers were believed to number about 40.
GUNMEN SPLIT UP: A North Ossetian Interior Ministry source told Interfax news agency the gunmen had split into three groups. About five had stayed in the school while a larger group had tried to break out of the town, and others had tried to merge with the hostages.
Officials had said some 500 people were being held in the school, but released hostages said the number could be nearer to 1,500, lying on top of one another in desperate conditions.
Russian media said 860 pupils attended Middle School No.1. Their number would have been swollen by parents and relatives attending a first-day ceremony traditional in Russian schools. Alexander Dzasokhov, president of North Ossetia, said the gunmen had demanded an independent Chechnya. -Agencies
'Hostage takers not Chechens'
Chechen separatist spokesman Akhmed Zakayev said in London that militants who took hundreds of people hostage in a school in southern Russia were not Chechens. "The hostage-takers were Ingush, Ossetians, Russians, but not Chechens," said Mr Zakayev, once a spokesman for Chechnya's separatist president Aslan Maskhadov. -AFP
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