RUSSIA - Sep 3 - At Least 150 Killed In School Siege.

Special forces storm the Beslan school where hundreds of children and parents had been held hostage, launching a gunfight in which about 150 are killed - dozens of them children. Reports on Sep 3 night quoting the health ministry put the death toll at above 200. The authorities moved swiftly to deflect responsibility for the raid which triggered explosions and skirmishes that lasted throughout the day. The head of the federal security service for North Ossetia Valery Andreev, said that the special forces raid had not been planned. It was triggered in order to save lives after the hostage-takers set off explosions even as negotiations were underway to end the three-day siege. There were chaotic scenes as special forces launched their own explosions in an apparent attempt to create diversions and allow hostages to escape. But some who did so were shot at, quickly adding to a total of more than 400 rushed to hospital. The authorities blamed the attack on extremist rebels with the support of foreign financing, in line with Putin's claim that the fighters in Chechnya were linked to an international terrorist network. Andreev said during the evening that 10 of the hostage-takers who had been killed were foreign nine of them "Arabs" and one African. Other local security officials said the rebel Chechen warlord Shamil Basaev and a radical Islamic Wahhabite financier, Abu Omar As-Seif, had backed the operation, which was led by Magomed Yevloyev. Some of the 20 or more hostage-takers escaped from the school building into neighbouring houses, and fighting continued into the evening as soldiers tracked them down. The number of dead and injured climbed rapidly into the hundreds. Many more fled the school, contradicting claims by the local authorities that only about 350 hostages had been held inside the buildings. The first wounded came out about 1.30pm. It was a woman in shock, covered in blood, smiling and speaking incomprehensibly. Then came children, some on stretchers, and being carried. There were so many cars parked around that the ambulances could not get close, and many were carried away in private vehicles. Around the hospital, there was the sound of cries and tears everywhere. One of the hostage-takers, wearing a denim jacket and carrying Muslim worry-beads, tried to hide under a car. When people saw him, they rushed over and began to kick him violently until soldiers took him away. The raid brought to an end a tense siege that had rekindled memories of the Moscow theatre siege in October 2002, when a raid by special forces after the use of knock-out gas left at least 129 civilians dead. However, the toll at Beslan looked set to surpass that. Aslambek Aslakhanov, Pres Vladimir Putin's adviser on the Caucasus, said that the final number could be "far more than 150". Aslambenk earlier claimed that the hostage-takers had made only vague demands to end the war in Chechnya, and to release a number of people arrested on suspicion of involvement in a raid in neighbouring Ingushetia last June.