Scenes From Russia's Deadly Siege

Russians got a horrific glimpse of what it must have been like to be inside the Beslan school during the militant siege that claimed more than 350 lives when a television station broadcast chilling images of the heavily armed, hooded assailants amid the crowd of women, children and men.

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Football-sized bundles that looked like explosives were attacked to wires and strings hanging from a basketball hoop and other objects, and one attacker in camouflage and a black hood stood with one boot on what NTV said was a book rigged with a detonator.

Red streaks on the floor appeared to be from blood, as if someone bleeding had been dragged across the wooden surface. The hostages pictured included women, children and men, and NTV estimated there were some 1,000 hostages in the gym.

At one point in the video, a terrorist shows the hostages his foot on a book rigged as a switch to detonate the bombs, reports CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.

A voice off camera, apparently one of the hostage-takers, says, "Wait, don't bring the children in here yet. Wait until everyone else gets out," reports Palmer. It is unclear what the voice refers to, reports Palmer, but witnesses say children were allowed to go to the bathroom five at a time, picking their way through the wires and ducking under the bombs.

In another scene, the shadowy form of a woman terrorist is seen, dressed in black with her pistol cocked. The wires of her explosive belt are clearly visible.

Tens of thousands of Russians massed outside the Kremlin to rally against terrorism Tuesday as mourners lowered caskets into the damp earth at a Beslan cemetery four days after the school siege.

Demonstrators — some bearing banners saying "We won't give Russia to terrorists" and "The enemy will be crushed; victory will be ours" — observed a moment of silence at 5 p.m. local time before an hour-long rally that authorities said drew about 130,000 people to the cobblestones near St. Basil's Cathedral.

"I have been crying for so many days and I came here to feel that we are actually together," said Vera Danilina, 57.

Meanwhile, the streets of the southern town of Beslan were crowded with funeral processions, and mourners gathered at the muddy cemetery to bury children with their favorite toys.

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

President Vladimir Putin has called for unity in vast, multiethnic Russia and sought to rally its people against enemies he says have aid from abroad.

Tuesday's demonstration, organized by a pro-government trade union, was heavily advertised on state-controlled television for two days, with prominent actors appealing to citizens to turn out. Banners bore the white, blue and red of Russia's flag, and speakers echoed Putin's statements that terrorists must be crushed.

Putin angrily denied his government should overhaul its policy on Chechnya because of the recent wave of attacks that have been linked to the conflict with Chechen separatists.

The world should have "no more questions about our policy in Chechnya" after the attackers shot children in the back, he said in an interview late Monday with foreign journalists and academics. He said the Chechen militant cause was aimed at fomenting conflict in volatile southern Russia and breaking up the country.

"This is all about Russia's territorial integrity," he was quoted as saying.

Putin also said his government would conduct an internal investigation but no public probe into the hostage-taking raid at School No. 1 in Beslan in the North Ossetia region bordering Chechnya. He warned that any parliamentary probe could turn into "a political show."

Two opposition politicians had called Monday for an investigation, including into whether the authorities had prior information about planned terrorist attacks and what the government was doing to stabilize the situation in Chechnya, where deadly fighting persists daily a decade after Russian forces first moved to crush separatists.

On Tuesday, the Foreign Ministry said Russia will take new steps seeking the extradition of people it says are linked with terrorism, including Chechen rebel representatives Akhmed Zakayev and Ilyas Akhmadov.

Zakayev, an envoy for separatist leader and former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, has been granted asylum in Britain. Akhmadov is in the United States. The ministry said evidence suggest Maskhadov was involved in the school seizure, an accusation Zakayev has denied.

The hostage-taking and other recent attacks "will help many in the West, where Zakayev and Akhamdov have found political asylum, to see the true face of terror and understand the measure of their delusion," the ministry said.

In the interview late Monday, Putin accused Western governments of double standards on terrorism and rejected calls for negotiations with Chechen rebel representatives.

"Why don't you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks. Ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace?" Britain's Guardian newspaper quoted Putin as saying.

"You find it possible to set some limitations in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child-killers?"

At the muddy cemetery in Beslan where gravediggers have opened up two new tracts in the past three days, relatives opened the tiny coffin of 8-year-old Vasily Reshetnyak, touched his forehead and kissed him goodbye. A favorite toy — a red car — was placed alongside his body.

North Ossetians and liberal Russian politicians and newspapers have criticized authorities' handling of the crisis, which some say further exposed the ineffectiveness of the Kremlin's hard-line policies in Chechnya.

Some mourners in Beslan criticized Putin, saying he flew into the grief-stricken town before dawn Saturday because he didn't want to face its people.

But for the most part, the popular president has avoided the brunt of the anger over the terror attacks.

"Of course I support him, and it's necessary to be even more harsh with terrorists," said Galina Kiselyova, 66, a history teacher who was at the Moscow rally. "We cannot let go of Chechnya the Caucasus is ours."

"Putin, we're with you," read a banner at the rally.

Militants seized the Beslan school on Sept. 1, a day after a suicide bombing in Moscow killed 10 people and just over a week after two Russian passenger planes crashed following explosions and killed all 90 people aboard — two attacks authorities suspect were linked to the war in Chechnya.

The official death toll of the three-day siege, which ended in deadly explosions and gunfire, stood at 335, plus 30 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.

North Ossetia's deputy health minister Taimuraz Revazov told Interfax that 332 people remained hospitalized Tuesday.

At the morgue in Vladikavkaz, 110 bodies remained unidentified, said Natalia Oleinik, head of the forensic department.