Very tragic for this to happen.
Death toll is still increasing -- 340 people dead.
Toll rises beyond 300, Putin visits town
08:05 AEST Sun Sep 5 2004
AP - More than 340 people were killed in a southern Russian school that had been seized by militants, a prosecutor said Saturday, and President Vladimir Putin accused the attackers of trying to spark an ethnic conflict that would engulf Russia's troubled Caucasus Mountains region.
Russian Deputy Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky told reporters that 322 victims, including 155 children, had been killed during the crisis in Beslan, and that all 26 attackers had been eliminated. That raised the death toll well beyond the 250 officials had previously cited.
Medical officials said more than 542 people including 336 children had been hospitalised as a result of the crisis, which ended in a wave of violence Friday. Commandos stormed the school and battled militants as crying children, some naked and covered with blood, managed to flee through explosions and gunfire after three days during which the hostage takers herded them into the gym, denied them food and water and threatened to kill them.
Putin flew to Beslan before dawn on Saturday, as smoke was still rising from the shattered school.
"Even alongside the most cruel attacks of the past, this terrorist act occupies a special place because it was aimed at children," he said during a meeting with regional officials, which was broadcast on Russian television.
He stressed that security officials had not planned to storm the school - trying to fend off any potential criticism that the government side had provoked the bloodshed. Some North Ossetians complained, however, that his visit was too little, too late.
"Why didn't he come earlier? .... Why did he come in the middle of the night?," said Irina Volgokova, 33, whose close friend and the friend's daughter were missing.
"He is the head of our country. He should answer for this before the people."
Dozens of people crowded around lists of survivors posted at the Beslan hospital, searching desperately for news of loved ones who were not yet accounted for. A man showed hospital nurses a photograph - a young boy dressed in a suit, like he was going to a birthday party or holiday celebration.
"We run here, we run there, like we're out of our minds, trying to find out anything we can about them," said Tsiada Biazrova, 47, whose neighbours' children had yet to be found.
For some, grief had turned to anger.
"Fathers will bury their children, and after 40 days (the Orthodox Christian mourning period) ... they will take up weapons and seek revenge," said Alan Kargiyev, a 20-year-old university student in the regional capital Vladikavkaz.
The school attack followed a suicide bomb attack outside a Moscow subway station Tuesday that killed eight people, and last week's near-simultaneous crash of two Russian jetliners last week after what officials believe were explosions on board.
Putin warned against letting the latest attack stir up tensions in the multiethnic North Caucasus region. "One of the goals of the terrorists was to sow ethnic enmity and blow up the North Caucasus," Putin said.
"Anyone who gives in to such a provocation will be viewed by us as abetting terrorism," he said.
©AAP 2004
