Tears and Bitterness Fill Russian Town

BESLAN, Russia — The sound of weeping floated out of open windows and doors across this town Sunday as relatives began to bury more than 330 victims of a three-day hostage ordeal that ended in chaos and bloodshed.

Friends greeted one another in the street, hugged and cried. Some expressed growing resentment at the way authorities handled the incident, which ended Friday with explosions and fierce gun battles between hostage-takers and Russian commandos.

For many, along with the tears, a frantic search for loved ones continued.

The school gymnasium where many hostages died became a memorial site Sunday as friends and relatives came to place flowers, Russian Orthodox icons and bottles of water in tribute to the dead. The bottles carried symbolic meaning because for most of their captivity, the hostages were not allowed anything to drink.

Oleg Tatomov, 35, was among the first residents permitted to enter the gym, where militants believed linked to separatist rebels in the nearby republic of Chechnya had held more than 1,000 hostages.

“Part of the reason I went there is I wanted to find my mother-in-law,” he said. “She’s not in the hospital. She’s not in the morgue. She’s not anywhere.”

Tatomov said his 3-year-old son had also been a hostage and that he had located him in a hospital in Vladikavkaz, 10 miles away, after a long, desperate search. The boy is expected to recover, he said.

A 25-year-old man in Beslan who was willing to give only his first name, Alan, was interviewed while cleaning up glass from windows that were broken by the shockwaves of explosions at the school.

“The smashed windowpanes are no damage at all compared to the fact that my sisters and my niece have disappeared,” he said.

“How could these terrorists have managed to come here?” Alan asked. “We asked this question on Sept. 1, and we still have not been given an answer.... How could they allow the storming of the school to begin when there were more than 1,000 people in there and the majority were children? I don’t know what to think.... If you go to the morgue, you could see a young child less than 5 years old, and his body is full of bullet holes. How could this have been allowed?”

Russian authorities said they had no plans to storm the school but that gun battles erupted after an explosion -- perhaps set off accidentally by the hostage-takers -- rocked the complex and hostages began to flee with captors in pursuit.

A tearful Alexander Dzasokhov, president of North Ossetia republic, where Beslan is located, visited wounded children in the hospital. “I want to beg your pardon for failing to protect children, teachers and parents,” he said.

Dozens of severely injured hostages, most of them children, were flown from this town of 30,000 to Moscow for special medical care. Many suffered brain injuries or severe burns, Russian media reported.

The death toll as of Sunday evening stood at 335 former hostages and 30 hostage-takers, authorities said.

Lev Dzugayev, a North Ossetian presidential spokesman, said 376 former hostages, including 193 children, remained in the republic’s hospitals. He said 207 bodies had been identified and that 260 people remained unaccounted for. Some bodies were so badly disfigured that genetic tests would be needed to identify them, he said.

Authorities now believe there were 32 hostage-takers, and the bodies of 30 have been found, Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky told the Russian news agency Interfax. The hostage-takers were of various ethnic origins, including Chechen, Ingush, Kazakh, Arab and Slav, he said.

Three suspected accomplices, including a woman, have been detained, North Ossetian Interior Ministry spokesman Ismel Shaov told the Itar-Tass news agency.

Russia’s ORT television showed footage of an unshaven and frightened-looking man, apparently Muslim, brought before the camera by two masked guards and described by Fridinsky as a member of the group that carried out the attack.

“I did not shoot. I swear by Allah I did not shoot,” said the man, whose hands were cuffed behind his back. “I swear by Allah I want to live.”

Authorities initially said that three hostage-takers had been detained, then said all had been killed and that three accomplices had been caught. It was unclear whether the man on ORT was alleged to be a hostage-taker or an accomplice.

In Beslan, crowds gathered at hospitals where lists of the injured were posted, and people walked around town with photos of missing loved ones, asking strangers whether they had seen them. Frantic parents approached television journalists and asked them to broadcast photos of their children.

“We’re looking for our boy, Timur Tibloyev, 11 years old,” said one mother, holding up a photo for a camera crew from ORT. “He hasn’t been found among the dead or the living. I was with him, but we were separated by an explosion.”

The large number of dead forced a sudden expansion of the town’s cemetery into a neighboring field, where dozens of men dug graves Sunday morning. At least 22 victims were buried Sunday, Itar-Tass reported.

The whole country shared in the grieving. Russian TV showed funeral processions moving through Beslan, mourners carrying crosses and coffins.

At Moscow’s main cathedral, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexi II led a service honoring the victims.

“The whole nation is mourning the tragedy,” he said. “Those events were aimed at shaking the unity of our people. But the unity of our people is based on our history, which teaches us how to overcome difficulties and suffering.”

Medical services in North Ossetia were overwhelmed by the number of victims.

“We’re dealing for the first time with such inhuman things,” Yevgenia Pogosyan, a doctor at a Vladikavkaz hospital, told ORT.

The Russian Red Cross issued an urgent appeal for donations to purchase medical equipment. The U.S. Embassy said the U.S. Agency for International Development would provide $50,000 for the medical treatment and support of hostage crisis victims, with the Russian Red Cross the main recipient. The German Foreign Ministry announced that it would give $123,000 to assist the injured and families of those who died.

Murphy reported from Beslan and Holley from Moscow.