With so many children held, the attack tests President Vladimir Putin's resolve not to negotiate with "terrorists". The rebels said they would only talk to regional leaders and prominent paediatrician Lev Roshal, who helped to negotiate the release of children during the Moscow theatre siege in 2002.
"Roshal is holding talks," North Ossetian Interior Minister Kazbek Dzantiyev told reporters. "He is the main interlocutor." But, he said, the gunmen severed telephone contacts with Roshal at 3 a.m. (2300 GMT, Wednesday). Dzantiyev said they had rejected offers to deliver food and water, but had assured Roshal the children were fine.
Officials said the gang had threatened to kill 50 children for each of their comrades killed. Soldiers and armoured cars waited in streets adjacent to the three-storey school, where nearly 900 children aged seven to 17 studied. Sporadic bursts of gun-fire could be heard.
It was the latest in a string of deadly attacks in Russia this year which have killed hundreds of people, all the signs pointed towards a Chechen rebel operation. But it remained unclear who the attackers were. "There are Chechens and Ingushis among the kidnappers. They speak good Russian," Dzantiyev said without elaborating.
Chechen separatist leaders have denied any links. "No one tells us anything," said Nikolai Dzaparov, whose wife and two-and-a-half-year-old grand-daughter were inside the school. "Some people say the terrorists are Chechens. Some people say they are Arabs. But we don't know."
The number of the attackers remained unclear. Officials first said there were 17, but Dzantiyev said on Thursday the gang included up to 40 fighters, men and women. Also unclear was the number of hostages with official tallies varying at first between 120 and 400. On Thursday chief regional spokesman Lev Dzugayev said there were altogether 354 hostages, while Dzantiyev said there were 400 children alone.
The presence of so many children posed problems for Putin. "We know how tough our authorities are when hostages are adults," tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote. "But we do not know what they will do now they have to take care of children's lives. They may back down just because it's about children."
Initial reports said the attackers had demanded the release of insurgents jailed after a June raid in Ingushetia, in which 98 people died. Rebels then staged a similar attack on the Chechen capital Grozny just a week before a candidate hand-picked by the Kremlin was elected regional president.
The Chechen poll was overshadowed by suicide bombings which downed two passenger planes, killing 90 people. Hours before the Beslan raid, a suicide bomber killed nine in central Moscow. "The authors of the terrorist attacks wanted to ... make Russians feel the 'Chechen hand' can reach them in a bus, on the metro, in a plane and in a busy street – anywhere," Kommersant daily newspaper wrote.
Putin, whose hardline tactics over Chechnya helped propel him to power in 2000, has said nothing in public about the latest string of attacks. The president broke off his seaside holiday on Wednesday and has discussed the crisis with U.S. President George W. Bush. The U.N. Security Council condemned the kidnapping and demanded the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.
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