BESLAN, Russia -Funeral processions filled the rainy streets of this southern Russian city yesterday, carrying coffins large and small, as townspeople buried scores of victims of a carefully planned school siege that prosecutors linked to a Chechen rebel leader.
Desperate families searched for those still missing from the siege at School No. 1, while others buried 120 victims during the first of two days of national mourning across Russia, which has seen more than 400 people killed in violence linked to terrorism in the past two weeks.
Reports emerged that the attackers apparently planned the school seizure months ago, sneaking weapons into the building in advance. There also were signs that some of the militants did not know they were to take children hostage and may have been killed by their comrades when they objected.
State television also sharply criticized government officials for understating the scope of the crisis in which hundreds of hostages were held for 62 hours by heavily armed militants who reportedly demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya.
The school seizure came a day after a suicide bombing in Moscow killed 10 people and just over a week after two Russian passenger planes exploded and crashed, killing all 90 people aboard -two attacks authorities suspect were linked to Russia's ongoing war in Chechnya.
On Monday, wailing women stroked the coffins or kissed wooden stakes that bore the names of victims until tombstones could be put in place in Beslan's cemetery. Passing trains sounded their horns in respect. A fuzzy, pink rabbit adorned one of the caskets.
Police erected heavy security cordons on the road leading to the cemetery before a visit by a high-level government delegation including Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the president of North Ossetia, the speaker of the Russian parliament and the prosecutor-general.
Among the first buried were Zinaida Kudziyeva, 42, and her 10-year-old daughter, Madina Tomayeva. Relatives said they tried to flee when the first explosions went off and were caught in firing between militants and Russian forces.
They couldn't run away. They didn't have time
said Irakly Khosulev, a relative from nearby Vladikavkaz. Someone should answer for this.
A prosecutor said the militants belonged to a group led by radical Chechen rebel Shamil Basayev. A man identified by authorities as a detained hostage-taker said on state TV that he was told that Basayev and separatist former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov were behind the attack.
Mikhail Lapotnikov, a senior investigator in the North Caucasus prosecutors' office, said on Channel One television that investigators have established the assailants were the core of Basayev's band and had taken part in a June attack -also blamed on Basayev -targeting police and security officials in neighboring Ingushetia.
The detainee, identified by a lawyer as Nur-Pashi Kulayev, said on both state-run channels that he and other members of the group were told the goal of the raid was to unleash a war on the whole of the Caucasus -the same thing President Vladimir Putin said was the attackers' aim.
On Sunday, Channel One showed the detainee looking frightened as he was manhandled by masked law enforcement officers and swearing to Allah that he didn't shoot women and children.
Criticism of the government response to the tragedy was mounting, with state television chiding officials for understating the magnitude of the crisis, for their slowness to admit that previous recent attacks were by terrorists and for their apparent
paralysis.
At such moments society needs the truth Rossiya television commentator Sergei Brilyov said Sunday night.
Yet the criticism, which was almost certainly sanctioned by the Kremlin, stopped short of the president himself.
Two politicians -liberal Irina Khakamada and nationalist Sergei Glazyev -called separately for an independent investigation into the hostage crisis, the Interfax news agency reported.
After the siege ended, Russian news agencies cited unidentified security sources as saying that the planners of the raid were believed to have scouted at least two schools in Beslan.
Judging by everything
they felt the better one for their goals was the main building of School No. 1 with its half-basement gymnasium annex
where the floor had to be replaced
the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted a law-enforcement official as saying.
The bandits were able to bring into the school a large quantity of weapons
ammunition
equipment and explosives
under the guise of planks
cement and other building material
enough to defend the seized place for a long period
