But Dzasokhov and other local officials were shouted down when they tried to reassure residents.
"We'll do everything we can," the regional finance minister told the crowd at the House of Culture. But he was drowned out by shouts of "We haven't found our relatives," "How could the terrorists get through all the checkpoints?" "Is the president going to resign?"
Another politician also sought to calm the crowd. "Let's just concentrate on burying the dead," he said.
Most of the dead were trapped beneath the wreckage of the school gym, whose roof collapsed at about 1 p.m. Friday when the guerrillas detonated explosives they had rigged around the room. Workers cleared the rubble, using a bulldozer to scoop up the debris. Refrigerated trucks took the bodies away.
At the main morgue in the nearby city of Vladikavkaz, about 150 unclaimed corpses were stacked in corridors and some were even outside in the parking lot late Saturday. Many had been so badly burned that they were charred beyond recognition. Many were the bodies of small children.
Relatives wandered in the rows of bodies, some of which were in black body bags, others wrapped in foil or plastic. Those walking there wore masks or pulled shirts above their noses to block the smell of death. People who found their loved ones put them in caskets and took them away; others kept searching. The sound of wailing periodically erupted in the otherwise silent ranks.
Zarina and Zhanna Basayeva waited outside while their brothers searched for their missing 9-year-old niece. They'd already found a dead cousin and had been back and forth between the hospital and the morgue several times. "Our brothers go in, look around and don't find her, and we get all hopeful," said Zarina. They wiped their eyes and headed off again, but did not look very hopeful.
There were a few happy reunions on an otherwise grim day. One group of children was found alive Saturday morning hiding in the basement of the school where they had fled at the start of the fighting, Lev Dzugaev, spokesman for the regional president, said in an interview.
But many of Beslan's 30,000 residents were searching.
Aza Pukhayeva rushed around the city with snapshots of her 12-year-old niece, Madina. Pukhayeva approached two boys at the House of Culture, showing them a picture of Madina in a bright yellow T-shirt. The boys said they had seen her in the school, but only before the bomb exploded.
Pukhayeva cried for a moment. "We've been to all the hospitals, but she's not on any list. She's not on the list of the dead either," Pukhayeva said. "She's probably still there." And then Pukhayeva jumped into her beat-up Lada Sputnik car and raced off.
Pages of names posted at Beslan's hospital suggested there were still survivors to be found. Each of the 543 entries documented one of the injured, along with a description. Among those injured were children shot from behind when they fled as the guerrillas started firing, witnesses said.
Many of the injured were listed simply as "unknown," such as No. 32 on one of the lists: "Unknown, approximately 14 years old. Diagnosis: Multiple shrapnel wounds to the body and head. Burns. Shock."
Authorities gave conflicting accounts of what had happened to the guerrillas during and after a battle that raged from 1 p.m. Friday until 2 a.m. Saturday. Estimates ranged from 26 hostage takers to as many as 40, and officials refused to publicly confirm who was in the group. Russian media have quoted sources saying the hostage takers were allied with Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev and led by Ingush fighter Magomed Yevloyev, code name "Magas."
Deputy Prosecutor-General Sergei Fridinsky said 26 guerrillas had been killed and none remained at large. "We think that not a single person managed to escape," he told reporters.
However, groups of special forces troops patrolled Beslan searching for possible escapees and Putin ordered the borders to North Ossetia closed while the hunt continued. In one residential neighborhood, a squad of soldiers knocked on doors and stopped passersby. They forced one woman to take off her sweater, saying they wanted to examine her shoulders.
Asked why, they said they were searching for a female terrorist, who was reported to have been wounded and would have a bruise from a rifle butt.
Glasser reported from Moscow.
