Grief & Questions In Russia

A numb Russia observed the first national day of mourning on Monday for the more than 350 victims of the terrorist school seizure, while 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.

At the school at the center of the tragedy, people lit candles and left shrines including children's notebooks, shoes, and bottles of water - symbolizing the water the hostages were denied over three days of terror.

Two rescue workers from Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry who were killed in the first moments of the battle over the school Friday - when they arrived to remove the bodies of executed hostages - were being laid to rest in Ramenskoye, the ministry's base outside Moscow.

A shaken President Vladimir Putin went on national television Saturday to make a rare admission of Russian weakness in the face of an "all-out war" by terrorists. He told the Russian people that they must mobilize against terrorism and promised wide-ranging reforms to toughen security forces and purge corruption.

The mourners' pain was made sharper by their belief that the Russian government lied about their tragedy from the start, reports CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.

Lazar Pliyev, who was burying his sister Sunday, said authorities said there were only 350 people in the school. But it seems there were far more: 11 grades of 70 children each, plus teachers and parents visiting for the first day of school.

Only on Saturday did officials finally acknowledge that the number of hostages exceeded 1,100, far more than previously stated.

There is no official explanation yet for why the security cordon around the school collapsed in chaos on Friday as soon as the shooting began. And to make matters worse the authorities just walked away from the biggest crime scene in Russia leaving it open to the public.

Townspeople can come and see the window where witnesses say the terrorists dumped the bodies of their victims. The shoes and the bloodstains are still there. They can also see the hole in the library floor where it's believed explosives were hidden weeks ago during the school's summer renovation. As local people trudge through the wreckage it becomes clear no proper forensic examination will ever be done here.

Vladimir Dzgoyev sat stunned after the wake for his wife, 22-year-old daughter and *-year-old niece. He watched the whole catastrophe unfold from his balcony. The people really responsible for this mess will never answer for it, he says. Some poor local official will take the fall instead.

Criticism of the government response was mounting, with even Russian state television chiding officials for understating the magnitude of the crisis, for their slowness to admit that previous recent attacks were by terrorists, and for their apparent paralysis.

"At such moments, society needs the truth," Rossiya television commentator Sergei Brilyov said Sunday night.

On Sunday, weeping mourners placed flowers and wreathes at graves hastily dug by volunteers, including one where two sisters - Alina, 12 and Ira, 13 - were laid to rest together. Relatives walked toward the cemetery bearing portraits of the dark-haired girls and simple wooden planks - temporary grave markers - bearing their names and the dates framing their short lives.

For date of death, both read Sept. 3, 2004, the day the hostage seizure - the third deadly terrorist attack to strike Russia in just over a week - ended in an a bloody wave of explosions and gunfire when commandos stormed the school as hostages fled after powerful blasts shook the building.

The official death toll stood at 335 Monday, not including the 30 slain attackers; the regional health ministry said 326 of the dead had been hostages, and the Emergency Situations Ministry said 156 of the dead were children.

More than 700 people needed medical help after the crisis. The North Ossetian health ministry said 410 remained hospitalized, including 23 in Moscow and 11 in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don.

As of Sunday, around 100 people were unaccounted for, the Interior Ministry said. Russian media speculated that some of the missing could be wounded victims who were too hurt, traumatized or young to identify themselves when they were hospitalized. Also, many of the dead have not been identified, with some bodies charred beyond recognition.

A plane delivered antibiotics, bandages and other medical supplies from Italy on Sunday, and two U.S. transport planes were due to deliver aid to Beslan later Monday.

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. Fridinsky said the man, who spoke Russian with an accent, would be charged and that he was giving useful evidence.

The school attack followed a suicide bomb attack outside a Moscow subway station Tuesday that killed eight, and last week's near-simultaneous crash of two Russian jetliners after what officials believe were explosions on board. The crashes took 90 lives. Chechen separatists are suspected in both attacks.

There were already signs of tougher measures by Russian authorities — against suspected militants and the media. The Los Angeles Times reports Russian troops took the relatives of some Chechen militants hostage during the early stages of the Belsan drama.

Elsewhere, the editor of the popular newspaper Izvestia resigned after his paper's critical coverage of the government response and Russian officials detained a reporter for Al Arabiya.