Thousands protest as grim video emerges

Demonstrations: Rallies against terror drew hundreds of thousands of Russians on to the streets of their stunned nation yesterday, as the reality of last week's tragedy in Beslan became all too apparent with the emergence of video footage taken inside the school during the siege.

Russia's NTV television showed footage shot by the militants who took more than a thousand hostages. The pictures showed militants including a masked and heavily armed man and a woman in Arab-style black headdress, as well as hundreds of hostages sitting in the gymnasium which later became a battleground.

At least 335 people, around a half of them children, died when Russian troops stormed the school.

Blood was smeared on the floor. Bombs hung from a basketball hoop and from a wire suspended across the room. Another lay on the floor in plastic container. One militant squatted, apparently working on a bomb with tape and wire clippers. The few spaces left by the hostages, including women fanning themselves in the heat and children with their hands on their heads, were strewn with wires and what appeared to be bomb-making equipment.

The video lasted around a minute and ended with the sound of one of the hostage-takers murmuring into his mobile phone. He was not speaking Russian.

President Vladimir Putin yesterday ruled out talks with Chechnya's guerrillas in angry comments late on Monday night to a small group of foreign journalists, as the death toll from the siege at the school in Beslan reached 335, almost half of them children.

"Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?" Britain's Guardian newspaper quoted Mr Putin as saying.

"You find it possible to set some limitations in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child-killers?"

Mr Putin said foreigners should have "no more questions about our policy in Chechnya" after the attackers allegedly shot children in the back, and said the region's militants wanted to foment conflict and spread separatism in the volatile North Caucasus. "This is all about Russia's territorial integrity," he insisted.

Moscow's police said more than 100,000 people attended a rally close to Red Square, while tens of thousands of others joined demonstrations in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and the Pacific coast port of Vladivostok, nine time zones east of the capital.

"We are not weak, we are strong!" the rally was told by a fist-shaking Moscow mayor, Mr Yuri Luzhkov, one of a host of politicians and celebrities to denounce terror after a fortnight that has shocked even violence-weary Russians.

Chechen women were accused of detonating explosives on two Russian airliners two weeks ago, and another blew herself up in Moscow a week later. At least 100 people died in the attacks.

More than 330 survivors were still recovering in hospital yesterday from the Beslan siege, while dozens of people were still traipsing around the town looking for missing relatives.

Demonstrators outside the Kremlin carried banners bearing slogans such as "We won't give Russia to terrorists", "The enemy will be crushed, victory will be ours," and "Terror is worse than the plague".

"I have been crying for so many days and I came here to feel that we are actually together," said a pensioner, Vera Danilina.

"How can you kill children and shoot them?" said Valery, a pensioner with a string of medals on his chest. "I came because Russia was slapped in the face, and we will not take it."