Russian siege: Death toll reaches 200

With an estimated 200 people dead during a 10-hour action to free the Russian school held by terrorists, Russian commando leaders late on Friday pronounced the school had been liberated.

A spokesperson for the Russian security forces said the resistance of the terrorists, who had held more than 1 000 hostages for nearly three days, had been broken.

But by midnight, Russian police were still chasing four terrorists who had escaped the school during the chaos as Russian troops stormed the school in Beslan, southern Russia.

Earlier, a senior Russian military commander had said all of the militants were almost certainly killed or captured.

Another official said three of the hostage-takers had been arrested.

”There is information about three bandit hostage-takers who are now in the hands of the secret service, who are working with them,” said Lev Dzugayev, spokesperson for the hostage crisis cell, according to Interfax news agency.

More than 200 people were reportedly killed and hundreds more wounded on Friday as Russian special forces stormed the school to free scores of children and adults held hostage by Chechen rebels for almost three days.

The latest death toll was announced on Friday evening by Interfax.

”More than 200 people died immediately after being shot by the militants or else later succumbed to their injuries,” the report said, quoting the health ministry of the republic of North Ossetia.

Itar-Tass agency reported earlier that 704 people had been hospitalised with injuries, 259 of them children.

Earlier, the Federal Security Service chief for North Ossetia, Valery Andreyev, told Channel One television that 556 local residents and former hostages were taken to hospital after being wounded in the siege, including 332.

More than 100 corpses of hostages were earlier found in the school gymnasium into which the rebels demanding independence for war-torn Chechnya had herded their hostages.

Some of the dead were apparenty killed when the school’s roof caved in as part of a confusing chain of events that ended the stand-off, launched on Wednesday by masked gunmen wearing explosives strapped around their waists.

A senior regional official told Russia’s Channel One television network that 79 bodies of those killed had been positively identified.

The fighting that erupted with the assault continued for hours in the school premises and at another location outside the school grounds.

At least 20 of the militants were reportedly killed by gunfire in the fighting.

Ten Arabs were among the 20 militants killed, an FSB official said.

Assault not planned

Russian special forces stormed the school on Friday, ending the three-day hostage crisis and freeing hundreds of children, parents and teachers held without food or water by the rebels.

Amid the cackle of gunfire and bursts of explosions, dozens of children, many wearing nothing but their underwear, were seen running out of the school into the arms of waiting troops. Later soldiers were seen evacuating the injured on stretchers.

The assault had not been planned, the FSB said on Friday.

”I want to point out that we had not planned any kind of armed action. We offered the continuation of the ongoing talks to peacefully release the hostages,” said the FSB’s Andreyev.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed the hostages’ safety was his top priority.

Eyewitnesses quoted by Russian news agencies said some of the hostage-takers tried to flee with the escaping children and were immediately fired upon by special forces around the building.

Russian special forces were looking for 13 of the gunmen, Itar-Tass reported, citing the regional interior ministry.

The hostage drama began on Wednesday when masked rebels, with explosives strapped around their waists, raided the school in southern Russia.

They had reportedly mined the school’s grounds, and at one point threatened to kill 50 children for every one of their number killed.

Parents had maintained an agonising, round-the-clock vigil outside the school since Wednesday, the first day of the new school year and traditionally a day of festivities and celebrations in Russia.

It remained on Friday unclear exactly how many hostages had been held, with figures ranging up to 1 000.

EU understands ‘dilemma’

The European Union expressed regret on Friday that the Russian hostage-taking had not ended peacefully but said it understands the ”dilemma” facing authorities there.

Russia has been rocked by a series of attacks in the past week alone.

Those have included a bomb at a bus station on August 24, bomb attacks that brought down two airliners the next day and killed 90 people and an attack by a female suicide bomber outside a Moscow subway on Tuesday that left nine dead and 51 people wounded.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, whose country currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said he and his counterparts gathered for talks were ”following with great concern the developments surrounding the hostage-taking in the school in northern Ossetia”.

”He regrets that the hostage crisis could not be solved peacefully, but understands the difficult dilemma the Russian government was confronted with,” said an EU presidency statement.

”With great sorrow he learned of the killing by hostage-takers of a number of people,” he said, expressing the EU’s condolences to the families of the victims, the Russian government ”and the Russian people”.

”Minister Bot underlined that the EU fully and unconditionally condemns all form of terrorism,” the statement added.

The statement came as the fast-moving and unexpected end to the hostage crisis clouded the start of two days of informal talks, in theory focused on rows over Myanmar, as well as the crisis in Darfur.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer added: ”Things are currently developing in a very threatening way. I cannot imagine any reason which would justify taking children, babies and their mothers hostage.

”Of course the Chechen conflict can only be resolved by political means.

”Many innocent people have been caught on the frontline.”