Government focus of anger as Russia mourns
A Russian prosecutor said the hostage-takers belonged to a cell formed by radical Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev.
Mikhail Lapotnikov, a senior investigator in the North Caucasus prosecutors' office, said the investigation also had established the group took part in a June attack targeting police and security officials in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia. Eighty-eight people were killed in that raid.
It was also claimed that the leader of the gang that took over the school in Beslan killed some of his own men who said that taking hostages was wrong.
Umar Sikoyev, a lawyer for the captured gunman, identified as Nur-Pashi Kulayev, said the band's leader did not tell them what their mission was and that after the seizure a fierce argument erupted.
The raid's commander shot the dissidents' leader to death and then detonated the suicide belts worn by two women raiders by remote control to establish order in the band, Sikoyev said.
Three suspects were captured in Beslan, and TV showed Nur-Pashi Kulayev, a 24-year-old Chechen. Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said he would be charged and was giving information.
A Russian website said Kualayev's brother and three other men from his village had been among the attackers.
Gazeta.ru said a second captured attacker was being treated at a hospital in the regional capital Vladikavkaz.
It identified another of the attackers as a Ukrainian named Anatoly Khodov.
In Beslan, 1,000 miles south of Moscow, townspeople crowded around the coffins of children, parents, grandparents and teachers ahead of the 120 burials in the town cemetery and adjoining fields.
Trains passing the cemetery stopped and blew their horns in a show of respect for the dead.
Among the first laid to rest were Zinaida Kudziyeva, aged 42, and her 10-year-old daughter Madina Tomayeva. Relatives said the two had stood up in an attempt to flee when the first explosions went off and found themselves in the line of fire between the militants and Russian forces.
"They couldn't run away. They didn't have time," said Irakly Khosulev, a relative.
"Someone should answer for this."
Police threw up heavy security cordons on the road leading to the cemetery, checking cars and identification papers in advance of a visit by a high-level government delegation including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov.
The dignitaries stood on a stage draped in red and black and addressed a small crowd through loudspeakers as the town's families buried their dead.
One woman approached the stage and shouted angrily at them to turn off the loudspeakers. A group of men hustled her and reporters attempting to speak with her away from the stage.
Criticism of the government response to the tragedy was growing, with even Russian state television chiding officials for their apparent paralysis.
"At such moments, society needs the truth," Rossiya television commentator Sergei Brilyov said.
Brilyov blamed the "system of administration," where "everything hangs on the bravery of the rank and file, but generals can't bring themselves to act until the president throws ideas to them."
On Saturday, President Vladimir Putin criticised Russia's law enforcement agencies for failing to rise to the challenge of terrorism.
But even Putin was not immune to criticism today.
"If we are talking about political responsibility, there can be no other opinion the top leadership including the president, the FSB (security service) and the interior ministry are to blame," independent MP Vladimir Ryzhkov wrote in the Nezavisimaya newspaper.
"We are absolutely defenceless in the air, in the metro, in our own capital and outside it. Putin won the contract to restore order in the country, to ensure security for people. We see today that the contract has been violated."
Two politicians liberal Irina Khakamada and nationalist Sergei Glazyev called separately for an independent investigation into the hostage crisis.
Khakamada said two questions had to be addressed: whether the authorities had prior information about planned terrorist attacks, and what the government was doing to stabilise the situation in Chechnya.
The school tragedy left few families untouched in Beslan, a tight-knit industrial town of 30,000 people.
The official death toll stood at 335 yesterday, plus the 30 attackers. 326 of the dead are said to have been hostages. 156 were children.
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