baby from the school
Soldiers in camouflage carried terrified infants to safety from a school seized by armed militants in southern Russia, but hundreds of captives faced a second night with little or no food or water.
Two explosions shook the town of Beslan tonight near the school. The cause of the blasts was not immediately clear but they were both several hundred metres from the school itself. Police extended a cordon around the school shortly after the explosions.
The gunmen, who threatened to blow up the school in Beslan in North Ossetia in the turbulent Caucasus region, freed 26 children and women from among at least 350 hostages. The infants and women were driven off in a car along with the former leader of neighbouring Ingushetia, Mr Ruslan Aushev, who mediated with the hostage-takers.
"It's all over, you're okay," a burly soldier in fatigues, automatic gun slung over his shoulder, whispered as he carried a wailing child of about three months past an armoured vehicle.
"Twenty-six people have now been freed, children and women," North Ossetian spokesman Lev Dzugayev said. Another official said those freed included 15 children and 11 women.
At least seven people died when the gunmen stormed the school. The International Red Cross, quoting their Russian colleagues, said up to 16 may have died.
The gunmen are still refusing requests to allow food and water into the school.
President Vladimir Putin, tackling the latest in a series of deadly attacks linked to separatist unrest in Chechnya, vowed he would do all he could to save hundreds of children, parents and teachers herded into the school gym in stifling heat.
Paediatrician Dr Leonid Roshal, also taking part in telephone talks with the attackers, described the hostage release as a "big victory". He warned an unsuccessful end to the crisis could produce "a war between fraternal peoples. I appeal to the wisdom of the Ingush, Ossetian and Chechen peoples to avoid a war. Otherwise thousands of lives will be lost".
The region has long been jostled by mistrust and unrest. Predominantly Orthodox Ossetia is Russia's main base of support in a war against separatism in mostly Muslim neighbour Chechnya. In the early 1990s hundreds were killed in a territorial conflict between Ossetians and Chechens' ethnic kin Ingushis.
The attackers have demanded the release of rebel fighters captured in neighbouring Ingushetia in June.
Mr Putin, facing one of the hardest choices in nearly five years in the Kremlin, said authorities were focusing on saving lives. "Our main task is to save the life and health of those who have ended up as hostages," Mr Putin told Jordan's King Abdullah in the Kremlin. "All the actions of our forces ... will be devoted to solving this task."
Mr Valery Andreyev, head of Russia's FSB security service in North Ossetia province, said: "There is no question at the moment of opting for force. There will be a lengthy and tense process of negotiation."
Mr Putin put off a visit to Turkey. The hostage-taking and a bombing on Tuesday that killed ten people outside a Moscow underground station prompted Mayor Yuri Luzhkov to cancel many events linked to this weekend's annual Moscow Day festivities.
The militants have threatened to kill 50 children for every one of their group that is killed by Russian forces, 20 for every one that is injured.
Mr Putin must decide whether to risk a slaughter by following past practice of using troops to end such sieges, or break a long-held vow not to negotiate with terrorists. He made a similar commitment to do all he could to save hostages in a 2002 Moscow theatre siege. When troops stormed the building, 129 hostages and 41 guerrillas were killed.
Russia is in the grip of a spate of attacks authorities say are the work of Chechen separatists. Two passenger planes crashed nearly simultaneously last week, killing 90 people. Separatist leaders deny any ties with the school group.
The United Nations has condemned the incident and called for the immediate release of the hostages
In Chechnya itself, two Russian soldiers were killed and seven people were wounded when their convoy was blown up by a mine south of the regional capital, Grozny.