Russia rejected SAS help

Russia rejected an offer from Britain to send SAS specialists to Beslan to end the school siege, it emerged today.

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that he talked to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday, the day before the carnage.

Mr Straw said today: "I said it went without saying that we were ready to provide any help we could but I also said that the Russian Federation is a large state with very substantial resources so I left it there for them to come back to us." Given the SAS expertise in hostage crises, any offer of assistance would almost certainly have included the crack unit.

In Russia one of the suspected terrorists behind the Beslan massacre as he was paraded on Russian state television.

His hands bound behind him, he is possibly the only hostage-taker left alive. Now the vengeance of a nation struggling to cope with a tragedy of such terrible proportions - the death toll has now risen to more than 350 - is focused on him.

Despite the hostages blown up in the gym, despite the children cut down by machineguns as they tried to escape, the man said he never fired his weapon.

"I did not shoot. I swear by Allah I did not shoot," he said. "I swear by Allah I want to live."

But deputy prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said yesterday: "This man directly took part in the attack. He is a member of the gang. Tomorrow the court will sanction his arrest and he will be charged."

In Russia, as the hostage-taker was displayed on state-controlled TV, he was asked by a reporter whether he felt sorry for the child hostages. "I swear by Allah, I did feel sorry for them," he said. "I have got children too." But later, pressed by his interviewer, he became less coherent before saying: "In general, I did not want to die anywhere. I do not want to die anywhere." His appearance on television highlighted the confusion over the fate of the hostage-takers. At first the authorities said that the 32-member group included Chechen separatists and 10 Arabs, and that three of them had been taken alive.

Then they said all the hostage-takers had been killed and three suspected accomplices detained. The authorities are yet to say if they are holding further prisoners.

The suspect on TV, whose accent suggested he came from Chechnya or North Ossetia, was said by security forces to have shaved off his beard to escape with the fleeing hostages when the siege collapsed. He was found by soldiers and immediately arrested.

Three days on, it remains unclear just who was behind the siege. Mainstream Chechen leaders have rushed to denounce it and the most powerful rebel leader, Shamil Basayev - said by some to have masterminded the siege - has condemned the operation and insisted his own troops played no part in it.

Attempts have been made by the Russian authorities to link the attackers to al Qaeda. One unnamed, highranking intelligence official was quoted as saying that experts had surmised from facial structures and other unspecified characteristics that one attacker was black and nine were Arabs born in countries close to the "equatorial part of the Arabian peninsula," possibly including Sudan and South Yemen.

They came from countries, he said, "where al Qaeda traditionally enlists new recruits to commit terrorist acts" worldwide. But in Beslan, some locals remained sceptical of the government's portrayal of the attack as an internationaloperation. One local resident who said he saw most of the bodies did not believe there were any Arabs among them, while some hostages said they believed the assailants were Chechens.

Today Russia starts two days of national mourning. All TV entertainment programmes have been cancelled. Across Russia, Orthodox churches have held services of remembrance.

In Beslan they have started burying the dead but with so many victims, there will be many days of funerals before all are laid to rest. The town has its own cemetery, but there simply is not room for all the victims. Instead they dug a double row of dozens of graves in a field next door to the cemetery.

There were the Tetova sisters - Alina, 12, and Ira, 13 - buried in a common grave. At the end of a freshly dug row of graves, first grade teacher Galina Vatayeva, 52, was laid to rest by colleagues and friends. Ruslan Frayev, 36, died with his mother, Busiya, 72, but his two children made it out alive.

Hundreds came to say goodbye to Anzhela Varziyeva, 32, a mother caught in the siege while bringing her son Mairbek to start first grade. Relatives said that seven-year-old Mairbek offered the hostage-takers 10 roubles (20p) - all the money he and his mother had with them - and asked to be freed.

In the chaos as the crisis ended, he was able to run away but was injured and remains in hospital. Anzhela was shot in the back and killed. "God, why did this happen?" cried Anzhela's mother, Zarima Badtiyeva, as she followed the coffin through the town. "No mother should outlive her children."

Alexander Dzasokhov, president of North Ossetia province, had tears in his eyes as he visited wounded children in hospital. "I want to beg your pardon for failing to protect children, teachers and parents," he said. The province's interior minister, Kazbek Dzantiyev, submitted his resignation. The offer was rejected.

Moscow is meanwhile bracing itself for further attacks following two bomb blasts and the downing of two airliners leaving a Moscow airport. Police units guard underground stations across the capital and announcers continually urge travellers to report suspicious people or packages. The annual Moscow city festival, City Day, was suspended at the weekend.

Crowds of people volunteered to give blood at Moscow hospitals on news that 16 of the most seriously wounded children had been flown to the capital for treatment.