Putin: Siege Shows Weakness

A shaken President Vladimir Putin made a rare and candid admission of Russian weakness Saturday in the face of an "all-out war" by terrorists after more than 340 people - nearly half of them children - were killed in a hostage-taking at a southern school.

Putin went on national television to tell Russians that they must mobilize against terrorism and promised wide-ranging reforms to toughen security forces and purge corruption.

"We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten," he said in an address aimed at addressing the grief, shock and anger felt by many after a string of attacks that have killed some 450 people in the past two weeks, apparently in connection with the war in Chechnya.

The former KGB spy, whose get-tough policy in the war against Chechen rebels vaulted him to the presidency five years ago, took no personal responsibility for the bloodbath.

Shocked relatives wandered among row after row of bodies lined up in black plastic or clear body bags on the pavement at a morgue in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, where the dead from the school standoff in Baslan were taken. In some open bags lay the contorted, thin bodies of children, some monstrously charred.

In Baslan, other relatives scoured lists of names to see if their loved ones had survived the chaos of the day before, when the standoff turned into violence, with militants setting off explosives in the school and commandos moving in to seize the building.

Baslan residents were allowed to enter the burned out husk that was once the gymnasium of School No. 1, where the more than 1,000 hostages were held during the 62-hour ordeal. The gym's roof was destroyed, windows shattered, walls pocked with bullet holes.

CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer, in Beslan, says, "In this town of 30,000, the sheer scale of the tragedy has people reeling. Everyone knows someone who was in that school."

Regional Emergency Situations Minister Boris Dzgoyev said 323 people, including 156 children, were killed. More than 540 people were wounded - mostly children. Medical officials said 448 people, including 248 children, remained hospitalized Saturday evening.

Dzgoyev also said 35 attackers - heavily-armed and explosive-laden men and women who were reportedly demanding independence for Chechnya - were killed in 10 hours of battles that shook the area around the school with gunfire and explosions after 1 p.m.

Putin made a quick visit to the town before dawn Friday, meeting local officials and touring a hospital to speak with wounded. He stopped to stroke the head of one injured child.

But some in the region were unimpressed, as grief turned to anger, both at the militants and at the government response.

Marat Avsarayev, a 44-year-old taxi driver in Vladikavkaz, questioned why Putin and other politicians didn't "even think about fulfilling the (militants') demands to save the lives of the children. Probably because it wasn't their children here."

During his visit to Beslan, Putin stressed that security officials had not planned to storm the school - trying to fend off any potential criticism that the government side had provoked the bloodshed. He ordered the region's borders closed while officials searched for everyone connected with the attack.

"What happened was a terrorist act that was inhuman and unprecedented in its cruelty," Putin said in his televised speech later. "It is a challenge not to the president, the parliament and the government but a challenge to all of Russia, to all of our people. It is an attack on our nation."

Russian newspapers carried harrowing photos Saturday of the bloody climax of the school hostage-taking, but carefully avoided assigning blame.

Russian state television, heavily controlled by the Kremlin, shied away from in-depth coverage, prompting a newspaper commentator to chide the electronic media for seemingly trying to avoid broadcasting the horrendous scenes being playing out in North Ossetia.

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.

Putin took a defiant tone, acknowledging Russia's weaknesses, but blaming it on the fall of the Soviet Union, foreign foes seeking to tear apart Russia and on corrupt officials. He said Russians could no longer live "carefree" and must all confront terrorism.

Measures would be taken, Putin promised, to overhaul the law enforcement organs, which he acknowledged had been infected by corruption, and tighten borders.

"We are obliged to create a much more effective security system and to demand action from our law enforcement organs that would be adequate to the level and scale of the new threats," he said.

An unidentified intelligence official was quoted by the ITAR-Tass news agency as saying the school assault was financed by Abu Omar As-Seyf, an Arab who allegedly represents al Qaeda in Chechnya, and masterminded by Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev.

It was still unclear how exactly the standoff fell apart into violence on Friday. Officials say security forces were forced to act when hostage-takers set off explosives - some however questioned that version.

The militants seized the school on the first day of classes on Wednesday, herding hundreds of children, parents who had been dropping their kids off, and other adults into the gymnasium, which the militants promptly wired with explosives - including bombs hanging from the basketball hoops. The packed gym became sweltering, and the hostage-takers refused to allow in food or water.

One survivor, Sima Albegova, told the Kommersant newspaper she asked the militants why the captives were taken. "Because you vote for your Putin," one militant told her, she said.

Another freed hostage said a militant told her, "If Putin doesn't withdraw forces from Chechnya and doesn't free our arrested brothers, we'll blow everything up," according to the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.

Russian officials said the bloodshed began when explosions were apparently set off by the militants - possibly by accident - as emergency workers entered the school courtyard to collect the bodies of hostages killed in the initial raid Wednesday.

Diana Gadzhinova, a 14-year-old hostage, was quoted as telling Izvestia that the militants ordered the hostages to lie face down in the gymnasium as the bodies were collected.

"They told us that there were going to be talks," she said. Others also told of how militants appeared to be confused and surprised when the initial explosions went off.

Hostages fled during the blasts, and the militants opened fire on them, prompting security forces to open fire and commandos to move in, officials said.

The explosions tore through the roof of the gymnasium, sending wreckage down on hostages, killing many. Many survivors emerged naked covered in ashes and soot, their feet bloody from jumping barefoot out of broken windows to escape.

With some families gathering for wakes for the dead Saturday, some were vowing vengeance.

"Fathers will bury their children, and after 40 days (the Orthodox mourning period) ... they will take up weapons and seek revenge," said Alan Kargiyev, a 20-year-old university student in Vladikavkaz.

Indeed, notes Correspondent Palmer, anger and frustration are building so much, Putin is afraid it could boil over into civil war."