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Russia buries its kids as fury mounts
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-09-07 10:55

Scores of school children killed in a hostage siege were laid to rest in an overflowing cemetery in the southern town Beslan amid wrenching grief as fury swelled in Russia over the crisis and the government's handling of it.

As the country observed the first of two days of national mourning, security was ordered strengthened at all schools and international medical aid poured in while aftershocks from the disaster reverberated here and around the world.

A teddy bear and flowers are seen in front of the representative office of North Ossetia in Moscow. Flags flew at half mast across Russia while residents in the small town of Beslan wept over dozens of coffins Monday as the country mourned the hundreds lost in the Beslan school hostage crisis and braced itself for future attacks.[AFP]

Funeral processions filled the streets of Beslan throughout the day and distraught crowds converged on the town's cemetery for the burials of more than 100 victims as the entire town turned out to mourn friends and loved ones under rain and leaden skies.

"Why God, why did you take him so early?" wailed one woman beside the open casket of a young boy, one of the hundreds of children, parents and teachers who died in the battle between their captives and security forces on Friday.

Relatives mourn Sergei Dryukov, 29, a hostage killed in Russia's school siege, after his funeral in the town of Beslan, September 6, 2004. Flags flew at half-mast across Russia at the start of national mourning for 338 people killed when Chechen rebels seized a school, while questions mounted over President Vladimir Putin's policies.  [Reuters]

The catastrophe was the worst of its kind in modern Russian history and was only the latest in a string of recent attacks that included the downing of two passenger jets and a suicide bombing outside a crowded Moscow subway station.

Unlike those attacks however, the bloodshed in Beslan which left 335 people dead, half of them children, and hundreds of wounded has sparked a primal anger among some Russians that the government was struggling to dispel.

The Russian press lashed out at President Vladimir Putin, saying his effort to link rebel fighters in Chechnya with international terrorism was a cynical ploy to escape blame for his uncompromising policy on the separatist fighters. 

Vigil in Rome : Some of a crowd of 150,000 people march holding candles, in the streets of Rome in memory of approximately 340 school hostages killed in Beslan, North Ossetia last week. [AFP]

Responsibility for the Beslan crisis "lies without doubt with President Putin, with the FSB security services and the interior ministry," the respected liberal lawmaker Vladimir Ryzhkov wrote in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

"You cannot hide behind the theme of international terrorism. The French, British, and US governments are managing to resolve the problems in their countries," he said.

Andrei Ryabov, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, articulated a question increasingly on the minds of many Russians wondering who was in charge of handling the hostage siege and who will be brought to account.

Friends cry over the coffin of killed hostage 15-year-old Alana Katsanova during the funeral in the town of Beslan, September 6, 2004. The sound of weeping mothers who lost their children in the bloody end to Russia's school siege drifted out of the houses of Beslan on Sunday as relatives prepared to bury the first of 333 people killed. [Reuters]

"Where was the eloquent Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov who on Tuesday had warned against the danger of new attacks?," Ryabov asked. "Where were the heads of the FSB security service and the interior ministry?"

Mounting criticism of Putin and the government however was counterbalanced by a surge of rage against "terrorists" who have carried out the attacks in Russia and displays of nationalist fervor.

In Saint Petersburg, some 15,000 people turned out Monday for a rally in remembrance of the Beslan victims and condemnation of terrorism. Many carried Russian flags and signs bearing slogans such as "Death to Killers of Children."

Local residents look at the destroyed school gymnasum in Beslan, North Ossetia. [AFP]

An "anti-terror" demonstration was also scheduled to be held Tuesday beside the Kremlin and organizers, the Kremlin among them, said they were expecting a turnout exceeding 100,000 people.

The Beslan tragedy meanwhile also took on international political dimensions as the European Union expressed regret at a "misunderstanding" which led to a sharp rebuke from Moscow over EU comments asking for explanation of how the Russian hostage tragedy could have happened.

Analysts said that apart from straining relations between Russia and the EU, the diplomatic row also highlighted divisions within the bloc itself on how to handle Moscow.

Russian officials meanwhile reiterated their affirmation that Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev masterminded the Beslan attack.

Rossia channel paraded what officials said was the only suspected hostage-taker still alive -- a man, who appeared to be from the Caucasus, confessing in a slurred voice to his involvement in the bloody hostage drama. "They gathered us in a forest, a person known as 'commander', and they said that we must seize a school in Beslan. They said this task was ordered by Maskhadov and Basayev," the dark-haired young man said haltingly.

The detained suspect, who said there were Uzbeks, Arabs and Chechens among the hostage-takers, added that he had been told the aim of the raid was to "provoke a war across the Caucasus."

Mikhail Lapotnikov, chief investigator for the north Caucasus prosecutor's office, was quoted by Interfax as saying that the hostage-takers, believed to number around 30, also took part in a raid in Ingushetia last June claimed by Basayev.

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