School Siege Survivor's Tale

In a terrifying videotape, 10-year-old Georgy Farniyev sat near a bomb, his hands behind his head and his face a mask of misery. He looked certain to die, but survived through luck, self-possession beyond his years and enough grit to pull shrapnel out of his own arm.

On Thursday, Georgy told The Associated Press of his ordeal from the back of an ambulance in the North Ossetian capital before taking a flight to Moscow, where he will be treated for his wounds.

Only last week, Georgy was lined up with classmates and their parents at the No. 1 School in his hometown of Beslan, ready for the first day of school. Then gunmen began shooting in the air, herding some 1,200 children and adults into the gymnasium and starting a siege that would end with 326 dead.

Georgy was with his aunt Irina and 6-year-old cousin, Elbrus. Both also survived with injuries.

"They told us to 'sit tight and if you scream we will kill 20 children.' One terrorist had 20 children that were killed, and because of that they came to kill us," Georgy told the AP.

There was not much water to drink, and only a few people were allowed to go to the bathroom during the two-day siege, Georgy said.

"Children, women and even men were fainting. They were not giving us water," said Georgy, who appeared emotionally numb — his thoughts and words swerving back and forth in time as he remembered his ordeal.

Some of the terrorists were bearded, but one was clean-shaven, Georgy said. At least two of the militants were women, and Georgy said they wore what looked like money pouches — "but there was no money, only explosives."

After the siege began Sept. 1, the militants placed bombs around the gym floor and in the basketball hoops.

On the second day of the standoff, Georgy said the militants killed some adults and one girl — shooting one victim in front of the hostages in the gym, but taking others away and killing them elsewhere.

On Tuesday night, Russians got a chilling glimpse of conditions inside the school when NTV television broadcast images that the station said were recorded by the assailants, presumably for an accounting to their leaders.

Hundreds of hostages were shown seated in the school's cramped gym. Many had their hands behind their heads. The wood floor was stained with blood.

Football-sized bundles of explosives were hanging from a basketball hoop. One attacker stood among the hostages with a boot on what NTV said was a book rigged with a detonator.

On the videotape, Georgy sat close to the side of the gym where some of the explosives were concentrated. Other survivors said he likely would have died there — the bombs went off in the chaos that ended the standoff on Sept. 3.

Georgy said he had been directly on a square-shaped explosive.

"One of the mines was right under us," he said. "There were a lot of explosives, grenades, bombs."

CBS News Correspondent Elizabeth Palmer repots it was Georgy's thirst that might have saved him. On the climactic day of the siege, when the shooting started, he crawled off in search of a broken water pipe to get a drink. After he'd left, the bomb on which he sat exploded, killing many.

Georgy rushed from the gym to a nearby room, then to a cafeteria where he was hit by shrapnel in his right knee and upper left arm. He limped into the kitchen and hid in a closet.

Georgy pulled the shrapnel from his arm and cleaned it with water, but was unable to remove the shrapnel from his knee. He said he found a telephone and tried to call for help, but it was broken.

A soldier later approached his hiding place and asked, "Are there any more Chechens?"

"I said 'No,'" Georgy said. Someone then took his hand, and he was passed out a window and into a vehicle to be taken to safety.

On Wednesday Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov said 326 hostages were killed and 727 wounded in the attack, which ended Friday in a wave of explosions and gunfire. He said 210 bodies had been identified, and forensic workers were trying to identify 32 body fragments. The death toll could rise, Ustinov said.

Also Wednesday, a top Russian general warned the military will strike "terrorist bases in any region of the world," while authorities offered a $10.3 million reward for information leading to two Chechen rebel leaders blamed for last week's deadly raid on a school.

At the same time, the authorities appeared to be backpedaling from their previous insistence on describing the attack as the work of international terrorists. Contrary to initial government claims, officials have cited evidence that the terrorists were linked to the Chechen civil war. And descriptions of the attacks as Arabs have dwindled.

Investigators said an accidental explosion appears to have triggered the bloody climax. On Friday, the militants decided to change the arrangement of the explosives, and they appear to have set off one bomb by mistake, Ustinov said. That sparked panic as hostages tried to flee and the attackers opened fire.

Meanwhile, Russia castigated the United States for its willingness to hold talks with Chechens agitating for independence and suggested the issue could harm bilateral relations, the Interfax news agency reported.

While condemning the terrorist attack, the State Department said Tuesday that Russia ultimately must hold political talks with rebellious Chechen leaders who are determined to break away from the Russian Federation.

In response, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said "we solve our internal problems ourselves and there's no need to search for an American route to political normalization in Chechnya," according to Interfax.