Military analysis: As military operations go, it was a near total disaster - an unplanned response to events beyond their control, writes Tom Clonan.
The trigger for yesterday's attack by Russian special forces on the besieged school in Beslan appears to have been a desperate attempt by a number of women and children to escape the building.
During a pre-negotiated pick-up of corpses outside the building at approximately 10 a.m. Irish time, a group of hostages, perhaps emboldened by the sight of Russian troops, made an impromptu bid for freedom. It would appear they were then fired upon by militants inside the school who also detonated at least two explosive devices.
This exchange of fire was the catalyst which saw Russian special forces storm the school. Despite the carnage and confusion which followed, this decision was understandable.
It is a universal principle among special forces internationally that at the point when captors begin to shoot hostages or detonate explosives in their midst, that moment represents 'H' hour - the military designation for the start of offensive operations.
With yesterday's attack prompted by an unexpected bid for freedom, the Russian response consisted of an unplanned and ad-hoc "immediate action" operation by special forces troops who had been in position near the school.
Among those troops involved in the storming of the school buildings in Beslan yesterday were members of Otryad Militsii Osobogo Naznacheniya or OMON, an anti-terrorist unit under the control of the Russian Federal Security Service or FSB.
Special forces units such as OMON operate under the direction of the FSB's Team Alpha when dealing with hostage scenarios. Team Alpha, Russia's dedicated hostage unit, was originally formed in 1974 by Yuri Andropov as part of the KGB's Directorate of Special Operations.
In a scenario remarkably similar to yesterday's operation, Russian special forces under the direction of Team Alpha were humiliated by Chechen rebels during a previous siege at Budennovsk hospital in southern Russia in 1995. Deployed by then president Boris Yeltsin to crush the rebel insurgency, Russian special forces launched two abortive attacks on the hospital that resulted in the deaths of over a hundred hostages and the escape of the Chechen rebels. This represented a nadir for Russian special forces and earned for them an emerging reputation for indiscriminate violence and inefficiency in the field. Despite this inauspicious reputation, however, since Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, Russian special forces have enjoyed renewed investment from a hardline president who has prioritised funding for dedicated anti-terrorist units.
Russian special forces under the direction of Team Alpha were deployed by Putin to crush the Nord Ost Theatre siege in Moscow in October 2002. During this operation, Russian anti-terrorist troops executed the mission in a manner which reinforced their reputation for brutality combined with incompetence. Not one of the 40 or so Chechen hostage-takers survived their assault on the building. One hundred and twenty-nine hostages also lost their lives in the attack. Yesterday's operation in Beslan was similar to the Russian assault on the Moscow theatre and was a classic example of the modus operandi of Russia's special forces - employing massive fire-power to prosecute blunt and uncomplicated frontal assaults on terrorist objectives.
The Russians had even less choice or flexibility with regard to their plan of attack on the school in Beslan yesterday. According to senior FSB spokesman Valery Andreyev, the assault was not pre-planned. Rather, he said, it was a spontaneous operation mounted by force of circumstance and due to provocation from the militants within the building. For this reason, the action to relieve the hostages was not a textbook operation. There were other factors at play, which influenced the apparently chaotic progress of the ensuing battle.
In most hostage situations, military planners assume that there is an in-built or latent desire to survive on the part of one's adversary. This desire for survival allows planners to model or anticipate likely enemy patterns of behaviour and to evolve appropriate tactical stratagems in response. However, the proven suicide propensity of the militants in Beslan meant that any such planning would incorporate rules of engagement predicated on the indiscriminate and overwhelming use of force.
The Russian concept of operations would inevitably be very swift, very simple and very violent.
As a consequence, the Russian troops who stormed the school yesterday will have gone into action on a maximum-force footing. Armed with high-velocity assault rifles, pistols and sub-machine-guns, the priority of special forces troops will have been to neutralise any remaining captors within the building. This cannot have been a simple task. Normally, soldiers are trained to fire bursts of automatic gunfire at what the military term "the centre of the visible mass" or the human torso.
However, in the case of Beslan two requirements will have forced Russian troops to adopt a different targeting strategy.
Firstly, torso shots might well detonate explosives strapped to the chest or midriff of a terrorist. Secondly, there would have been the requirement to ensure that gunshot wounds be fatal to prevent the terrorist from detonating an explosive charge. Consequently, it is likely that during the assault phase of the operation, all adults - hostages and captors alike - within range of attacking special forces were at risk of being targeted in this way. This factor, complicated by the confusion of battle, contributed to the high number of casualties sustained in the assault.
Despite these desperate efforts, however, the terrorists still managed to detonate their explosives in the midst of hundreds of defenceless children. The blast, burn and gross blunt trauma injuries suffered by the children yesterday - including decapitation and limb separation - bear testimony to this bestial action on the part of the terrorists.
In summary, a number of key factors emerged during yesterday's operation. Russian special forces will have maintained their reputation for a predisposition towards bungling and indiscriminate brutality. This, allied with the no-holds-barred nature of a hastily-improvised operation, combine to partially explain the anarchic progress of yesterday's assault and follow-up actions.
What is inexplicable was the lack of a simple cordon to prevent the terrorists from fleeing the scene. Over the coming days the international community will be forced to contemplate the root causes of a trend in global terrorism towards indiscriminate and apocalyptic violence - of whose loosely interconnected alliance, some members may still be at large.
Dr Tom Clonan is a fellow of the Inter University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society based at Loyola University, Chicago