Town overwhelmed by grief

By Artyom Liss
BBC reporter in Beslan

"Why, why, why, why do they let the Chechens in? Why did they allow this to happen? Why is nobody telling us the truth?"

In the main square in Beslan, a woman in her late 30s is crying in front of dozens of television cameras.

For many, an agonising wait has ended with news of the unbearable

Like many people in this small North Ossetian town, she still knows nothing of the fate of her daughter, one of more than 1,200 people taken hostage by a gang of extremists three days earlier.

And like hundreds of her neighbours, she has spent three days in this square, in soaring heat, trying to get any information, any news, anything that could give her new hope.

"When the shooting began on Friday," another local resident told us, "it was terrible, but it was at least something we could be sure about, a sign that everything was coming to an end.

"It is only now that the full horror of the events of the last days is beginning to sink in."

With more than 300 people dead, and 700 injured, the tragedy has touched almost every family in the small town.

'Hell on earth'

Outside the main mortuary, in the regional capital Vladikavkaz, some 150 people are waiting to be let in to identify the bodies of the dead.

Whenever my son closes his eyes, in his mind's eye he sees a bearded man, one of the captors. So he is afraid of closing his eyes - he stays awake, even though he is so weak Danya Beslan resident

One of them, Alina, a nurse at the local hospital, came here almost straight from the ward. Her 16-year-old cousin is still unaccounted for.

Alina has not been able to find her in the hospitals or morgues of Beslan, Vladikavkaz or neighbouring towns.

"She wouldn't want to have seen what was happening in our hospital yesterday," Alina told us.

"It was hell on earth."

Every now and then a coffin is brought out of the mortuary - but much more often, body bags are carried in.

Locals peer over the fence of the morgue and count the dead. Women are crying and praying, men standing by their sides and swearing silently to themselves.

A short distance away, outside the Vladikavkaz emergency hospital, people are examining the unofficial list of the injured.

Some of the wounded are too weak to speak their name and the doctors take photographs of them and put these pictures on the hospital wall beside the list.

Outside the morgue, relatives of lost loved ones still wait

Tamerlan, who only received minor injuries, is too traumatised to talk about his ordeal. But his mother Danya told us that he does not want to return to Beslan, and he says he will never go to school again.

"Whenever he closes his eyes," Danya says, "in his mind's eye he sees a bearded men, one of the captors. So he is afraid of closing his eyes - he stays awake, even though he is so weak."

And back in Beslan, the atmosphere is tense with grief and anger. Locals still cannot believe that over 30 rebels managed to slip through the checkpoints set up in the northern Caucasus since the Chechen war began.

"For them at the top, it's all about money and politics. For us, it's about ourselves and our loved ones," Rustam, a resident of Beslan, told us.

Hidden weapons?

Russian security services are now trying to verify persistent reports that weapons had been brought into the school long before the siege began.

The remains of the building will be destroyed

Some of the hostages said they were forced by the extremists to lift the floorboards and to remove ammunition and explosives from underneath.

As twilight fell, some of the relatives were allowed into the gym, where the hostages were held.

Under the remainder of the ceiling, which came down on hostages after one of the explosions, and by the burnt-out basketball hoops, people were laying flowers, some of the locals barely able to move.

This place is already haunted by its own ghosts.

Local authorities in Beslan have promised to demolish what remains of the school building.

They are planning to erect a monument to the dead at the site of one of the worst tragedies in Russian history.