Beslan (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Russia observed the first national day of mourning on Monday for the hundreds of victims of the terrorist school seizure, while desperate families searched for the missing and foreign planes delivered medical supplies to this grief-stricken southern region neighboring Chechnya. In Beslan, townspeople crowded around the coffins of children, parents, grandparents and teachers ahead of the 120 burials scheduled in the town cemetery and adjoining fields. Most people in Beslan had a relative, friend or neighbor killed or wounded.
The official death toll stood at 394 Monday, plus the 30 attackers: 186 children are missing. The regional health ministry said 326 of the dead had been hostages, 156 of the dead were children. More than 700 people needed medical help after the crisis. The North Ossetian health ministry said 411 remained hospitalized, 214 of them children. Twenty-three of the most badly injured patients were in Moscow and 11 in thes outhern city of Rostov-on-Don.
State-controlled Channel One television, without citing a source, said Sunday that the attackers
included Kazakhs, Chechens, Arabs, Ingush and Slavs. North Ossetia's Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said Saturday that 35 attackers were killed. However, Russian Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said Sunday that according to the latest information, 32 terrorists had been involved and the bodies of 30 of them had been found, Interfax reported. Three suspects were detained Saturday in Beslan, Interfax reported, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, and Channel One showed an unidentified man Fridinsky said was among the attackers in the hands of masked officers. The Gazeta.ru Web site identified the detainee as 24-year-old Nur-Pashi Kulayev from Chechnya, and said his brother and three other men from his village had been among the attackers. It identified another of the attackers as a Ukrainian named Anatoly Khodov.