Half-naked and bloodied children ran terrified through the street, thirstily grabbing water bottles from medics as gunfire cracked, ambulance sirens sounded and mothers wailed, write Oliver Bullough and Richard Ayton in Beslan
"There were two big explosions," one woman hostage said. "We started pushing all the children out of the windows... Everyone who was there started pushing them out."
"I smashed the window to get out," one young boy with a bandaged hand told Russian television. "People were running in all directions... They [the rebels\] shot from the roof."
Bullet holes riddled the red brick walls of the school. Smoke rose from the collapsed roof of the gymnasium, which the militants had threatened to blow up at the start of the crisis.
Six bodies lay covered with white sheets near the school gates, one the almost naked corpse of a girl of around 16 with an unnaturally pale face, another a young boy less than three feet tall.
Men and women filed past, hands covering their mouths, tentatively lifting the sheets to see if they recognised the bodies. A 40-year-old man wearing a light brown shirt knelt by a body, crying into his hands.
The lucky ones among the crowds of relatives who had waited day and night outside Beslan's Middle School No 1 held emotional reunions with children who had stripped to their underwear during two days in a stifling gym with little water and no food.
A weeping mother stroked her child's blonde hair, a grandmother tended a young boy's bloodied face.
Others had to face further uncertainty amid the chaos.
"My friend is a teacher at the school, but since the assault we have heard nothing about her," said Vladimir. "We don't know where she is.
"We are going from hospital to hospital looking for her."
As the battle raged, some hostage-takers fled the school in the southern town of Beslan, pursued by Russian troops.
Dozens of civilian cars rushed at speed towards the school, some commandeered by relatives desperate to find out what had happened inside the school.
Anger also flared in this Russian Orthodox part of the Caucasus mountains, ethnically and religiously distinct from the nearby Muslim regions of Chechnya and Ingushetia. A crowd of around 200 people started to attack a swarthy man who looked like he might be a Chechen until police intervened, firing shots into the air to disperse them.
Others sought to organise care of the wounded at local hospitals where 1,000 beds had been prepared.
"Everyone to the hospital! Quickly! The wounded will need blood!" shouted one policeman.
Dazed girls were still wearing decorative white hair bands and ribbons in their hair now streaked with dirt - their first day of school now a nightmarish memory.
As gunfire and explosions sounded again last night as soldiers cleared the school room by room, some local young people reflected the universal view that the hostage-takers had breached the ultimate taboo by attacking children.
"These are not people but zombies. Taking children is totally unacceptable," said Alan, a student. "A child will not even bite a snake. These terrorists have no right to be called people."
Elsa, returning from the hospital where she had been visiting her niece after her release, said: "These terrorists were disgusting. They refused the children food and drink. When they asked for drink, they pissed in their shoes." - (Reuters/Financial Times)