Tavaseyeva forced her grandson Elbrus under a bench and was lying on top of him when another hostage, a man, grabbed her and led her to a door. Her grandson survived.
Death Toll Still Rising
Outside the school, the chaos was magnified. Armed civilians, many of them toting hunting rifles, converged on the scene. "They only got in the way," an Interior Ministry soldier said. "The only good they did was pull out the wounded. There were so many of them. They were so aggressive, it was impossible to push them aside." Adding another layer of confusion, he said, some law enforcement officers were in civilian clothes.
Family members comfort a woman who identified one of the slain hostages as her relative, at a morgue in Vladikavkaz, where survivors are being treated.
(Sergei Karpukhin -- Reuters)
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It took at least four hours for soldiers to enter the school. When they got in, they found a deadly maze of barricades, booby traps and obstacles. "All the bottom floor was barricaded with desks and chairs," said a soldier. "There was a sniper and machine gunner on the bottom floor." One militant was caught before he could detonate a bomb, he said.
After Interior Ministry troops were informed that there were no more survivors inside, they opened fire using grenade launchers and tanks positioned 150 to 200 meters away. The tank fire finished off the roof. It is unclear if everyone in the rubble of the gym was, in fact, dead.
The soldiers accused police of doing a terrible job of crowd control. Some guerrillas donned civilian clothes to attempt to escape by mingling with the crowd. One guerrilla tried to get through with a wounded man, but special forces stopped him, the soldiers said, adding that they personally saw two captured guerrillas.
One guerrilla was set upon by civilians and killed. "People got a hold of him and just tore him apart," said one of the soldiers. But the soldiers noted that the crowd's hatred was blind and they attempted to kill a Russian prosecutor, mistaken for a guerrilla.
By late Saturday morning, the death toll was still rising. In the intensive care unit at a Vladikavkaz hospital, a 2-year-old boy known only by his family name, Daurov, was surrounded by doctors and nurses. His mother, father and sister were in critical condition in other hospitals, doctors said. Shrapnel had sliced through his chin and into his chest. Another piece struck his liver.
His blond curls were brushed back from his pale forehead, and his tiny body was perfectly still except for his chest, which heaved as an artificial respirator pumped air into his lungs.
A doctor turned away from the bed.
"He's already dead," he said. A nurse stroked his hand in farewell.
