RUSSIA: Three Russian policemen were charged yesterday with criminal negligence leading to the deaths of more than 350 hostages seized at a school in Beslan.
The charges were the first brought against police, who were widely blamed in the region for failing to prevent the tragedy.
Half the victims were children.
Local news agencies reported the charged men were heads of police in North Ossetia, where Beslan is located, and Ingushetia, a neighbouring region where some of the kidnappers came from.
The rebels, supporters of Chechen independence, seized the school with some 1,200 hostages on September 1st and held it for more than two days before special forces stormed the building in a raid that turned into a bloodbath.
Prosecutors did not give details of the charges, but it is thought to include failure to provide adequate patrols of the border area, and responsibility for the presence of a rebel camp in Ingushetia.
The only gunman captured alive by Russian forces says the hostage-takers trained there for their attack.
Many local people said police should have stopped the militants from getting to the school and kept irregular militiamen away from the scene once the storming started.
The general prosecutor's office has said two other local police chiefs, who are in hospital, would be charged with the same crime after they were discharged.
Five bodies - those of two girls, two boys and a suspected male hostage-taker - remained unidentified since the siege, Russian prosecutors said yesterday. - (Reuters)