Local police may have helped terrorists plan Russian siege

THE militants who seized a school in Russia, killing more than 350 people may have had help from local police, an official admitted yesterday.

Meanwhile, the president of North Ossetia, the southern province where the hostage drama unfolded, apologised for failing to avert it.

"I fully understand my responsibility," Alexander Dzasokhov told doctors and relatives of the wounded children in a hospital in the regional capital Vladikavkaz, not far from Beslan.