Hostage tells of three days of hell

Holding up the corpse of a man just shot dead in front of hundreds of hostages at a Russian school, the rebel – his pockets stuffed with ammunition and grenades – warned: “If a child utters even a sound, we’ll kill another one.”

When children fainted from lack of sleep, food and water, their masked and camouflaged captors simply sneered. In the intolerable heat of the gym, adults implored children to drink their own urine.