Russia mourns but bitterness and anger mount

A numb Russia observed the first of two days of national of mourning today for the hundreds of victims of the school siege while criticism mounted on the government over its handling of the situation.

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 broke 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, 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 from the nearby city of Vladikavkaz. “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 understating the magnitude of the crisis, for their slowness to admit that previous recent attacks were by terrorists and 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 – believed to be the source of much of the violence.

The school tragedy left few families untouched in Beslan, a tight-knit industrial town, whose population of 30,000 belies a village atmosphere in which many leave their doors unlocked. Most people in Beslan had a relative, friend or neighbour killed or wounded.

The official death toll stood at 335 today, plus the 30 attackers the regional health ministry said 326 of the dead had been hostages, and the Emergency Situations Ministry said 156 of the dead were children.

More than 700 people needed medical help after the crisis. The North Ossetian health ministry said 411 remained in hospital, 214 of them children. Twenty-three of the most badly injured patients were in Moscow and 11 in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.

Around 100 people were unaccounted for, the Interior Ministry said. Russian media speculated that some of the missing could be wounded victims who were brought to various hospitals unconscious or too deep in shock – or just too young – to identify themselves. Also, many of the dead have not been identified, with some bodies charred beyond recognition about 60 would need DNA analyses for examination.

A plane delivered antibiotics, bandages and other medical supplies from Italy on Sunday, and two US transport planes delivered aid today.

As some residents buried their dead, others searched for relatives. Many expressed doubt over the government accounts of the tragedy’s magnitude, a scepticism stoked by severe initial understatements by officials of the number of hostages, which a regional spokesman finally acknowledged to have exceeded 1,100.

Questions also swirled about the identity of the hostage-takers - state-controlled Channel One television, without citing a source, said Sunday that the attackers included Kazakhs, Chechens, Arabs, Ingush and Slavs.

North Ossetia’s Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said Saturday that 35 attackers were killed. However, Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said on Sunday that according to the latest information, 32 terrorists had been involved and the bodies of 30 of them had been found, Interfax reported.