A gang of dozens of heavily armed men and women released at least 26 hostages from a besieged school in southern Russia yesterday, but negotiators said there had been no progress in talks to free more than 300 other children and adults, writes Daniel McLaughlin.
Two explosions said to be rocket-propelled grenades shook the town of Beslan early today. Police extended a cordon around the school shortly after the blasts.
The release of the hostages, most of them babies with their mothers, was the only glimmer of good news as the siege went into its second night, and Russian President Mr Vladimir Putin assured a shocked nation that troops were not about to storm the school. Officials said the attackers were from North Ossetia, where the school is located; neighbouring Chechnya, where Russia has been fighting separatist guerrillas for a decade; and Ingushetia, another unstable region in the North Caucasus where militants have killed dozens of Russian servicemen in recent months.
The group of up to 40 guerrillas, armed with machine guns and belts of explosives, poured into the school on Wednesday morning as children, parents and teachers arrived for the start of term.
The assailants killed 16 people as they fought their way into the school and opened fire on the first police units to arrive on the scene. They have demanded an end to hostilities in Chechnya and the withdrawal of Russian troops, and the release of comrades in Ingushetia who were arrested after launching a deadly raid there in June.
Negotiations with former Ingush president Mr Ruslan Aushev and Dr Leonid Roshal - who gained prominence for treating hostages during the deadly 2002 theatre siege in Moscow - eventually won freedom for the youngest captives and their mothers.
But the fighters refused to allow food, water and medicine to be taken to the hostages, and rejected an offer of safe passage to Ingushetia and Chechnya and a request to let adults take the place of children trapped in the school in the town of Beslan. Hundreds of people massed behind the security cordon around the school, and periodically mobbed officials to try and find out what was happening in the building.
An explosion near the school caused panic in the crowd until it was blamed on a burning car, and occasional gunfire prompted tears and cries of despair from the hostages' relatives, many of whom had spent the night at the scene.
Mr Ruslan Tivitiv, who was also among the crowd, expressed the anger and fear of many Russians when he said: "These children are not to blame if bandits come here. It's the authorities who are to blame. They can't restore order or guard the borders."
Mr Putin came to power in 2000 vowing to crush Chechnya's separatists, but a double airliner bombing last week and a suicide attack in Moscow on Tuesday compounded the impression that the Kremlin is losing its battle with rebels.
"Our main task is to save the life and health of those who have ended up as hostages," Mr Putin said.