The four leaders inside the school represented the spectrum of the region's ethnic groups: a Chechen, a Russian, an Ingush and an Ossetian, according to tentative identifications by Russian officials. What remained unclear was the extent of the involvement of Arab fighters, if any. Russian officials initially said 10 of the hostage takers were Arabs, but surviving hostages said in interviews that they saw no Arabs and not one was identified as a leader to outside negotiators.
Russian investigators are checking out reports from an unidentified Western intelligence service suggesting that some of the attackers came from Jordan and Syria, according to a source briefed on the government's investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. An Islamic group tied to al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman Zawahiri, has claimed responsibility for the attack.
In Beslan, family and friends buried the victims of the school siege as rain poured down on mourners and gravediggers. Funeral processions arrived one after another, with as many as five people buried at the same time.
(Ivan Sekretarev -- AP)
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_____Photo Gallery_____
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Russia Begins Burying Victims: Funeral processions in Beslan on Monday moved one after another for the hundreds who died in the Russian school hostage crisis.
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Photos: Standoff Ends
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Photo Gallery: The hostage standoff at a school near Chechnya turned tragic with hundreds of children and adults killed or injured during fighting.
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_____More From The Post_____
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Putin Angered By Critics On Siege (The Washington Post, Sep 8, 2004)
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Old Animosities Boil Anew In Wake of School Tragedy (The Washington Post, Sep 8, 2004)
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Under a 'Crying' Sky, Beslan's Dead Are Laid to Rest (The Washington Post, Sep 7, 2004)
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Russia Admits It Lied On Crisis (The Washington Post, Sep 6, 2004)
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A Gruesome Tour Inside School No. 1 (The Washington Post, Sep 6, 2004)
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But some analysts remained skeptical, arguing that the Russians were exaggerating the Arab connection so Putin could claim to be fighting international terrorists rather than domestic nationalists.
"It could be there were advisers from the Middle East, but initiating the plan, executing it, belonged to locals," said Alexei Malashenko, a regional specialist at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research organization.
Calling the shots, according to Russian investigators, was Basayev, the brutal guerrilla leader who has fought the Russians in two wars over the past 10 years and been designated a terrorist by the United States and United Nations.
Basayev stormed a Russian hospital in 1995 and took more than 1,000 patients and doctors hostage and sponsored the capture of a Moscow theater in 2002 that led to the deaths of 129 civilians.
In apparent retaliation for the attack on the school, Russian authorities rounded up relatives of Basayev and Maskhadov in Chechnya on the second day of the siege. "I think it was to be hostages for hostages," Akhmed Zakayev, a Maskhadov lieutenant, said in an interview. Twenty of Maskhadov's relatives were detained and later released, Zakayev said.
Col. Ilya Shabalkin, a military spokesman, said the family members were held at the main base in Chechnya for their own protection. "We hid them in Khankala for two days to avoid vengeance actions against them," he said.
The 32 guerrillas who seized School No. 1 in Beslan managed to evade detection on the way to the school by traveling along forest roads and picking up at least one and perhaps several police officers along the way who helped get them through checkpoints, investigators said. "Most likely these people were made to do that under threat," said Apiyev, Ingushetia's deputy interior minister.
Investigators are still trying to piece together how the first bomb, which triggered the confrontation, went off. Aslakhanov said one theory was that a guerrilla was confused over the wires and connected the wrong ones. But Aslakhanov also pointed to the internal rift.
"The special services have a recording of a split among the terrorists," he said. "Some wanted to leave and others wanted to stay. The conflict was happening and at that moment this tragic explosion occurred."
The four commanders of the school operation were identified by the code names Abdullah, Fantomas, the Colonel and Magas.
Abdullah, described as an Ossetian named Vladimir Khodoyev, fought alongside Basayev in the past. Fantomas was a Basayev bodyguard who may be Chechen or Russian, officials said. The Colonel appeared to be a Russian who many of the hostages remembered as a regular presence in the gym.
The fourth commander drew the most attention, a man known as Magas, a nickname taken from Ingushetia's capital. Magas emerged this year as head of the Ingush Jamaat, a militant group allied with the Chechen guerrillas, and he led the June raids in his native Ingushetia, killing dozens of police officers and prosecutors. He has defied efforts to hunt him down. Russian authorities twice reported killing him this summer, only to discover they were wrong.
