Putin orders crackdown

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a clampdown in the Caucasus on Saturday after a hostage seizure at a school by Chechen separatists ...

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a clampdown in the Caucasus on Saturday after a hostage seizure at a school by Chechen separatists ended in a bloodbath with 322 people killed, half of them children.

In a visit at dead of night to the hospital in Beslan, Putin warned separatist sympathisers they would be viewed as 8216;8216;accomplices of terrorism8217;8217;. The death toll after Friday8217;s bloody climax to the two-day siege included 155 school children, many of them held inside a gym by their captors, and confirmed the episode as the grimmest hostage-taking of modern times. Officials confirmed for the first time media reports that the separatists had taken more than 1,000 people hostage when they stormed into the school on Wednesday.

A total of 26 militants, 10 of them Arabs according to officials, had staged the hostage seizure, said Deputy Prosecutor-General Sergei Fridinsky. All had been killed.

8216;8216;As a result of the terrorist acts, 322 people were killed, 155 of whom were children 8230; I think the death toll will rise, but probably not very much,8217;8217; Fridinsky said.

Putin said he had ordered Beslan and North Ossetia to be sealed off in follow-up operations by security forces.

8216;8216;One of the tasks pursued by the terrorists was to stoke ethnic hatred, to blow up the whole of our North Caucasus,8217;8217; he told security officials.

8216;8216;Anyone who feels sympathetic towards such provocations will be viewed as accomplices of terrorists and terrorism.8217;8217;

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He also declared national mourning on September 6 and 7. Moscow bridled quickly at a more querulous statement by the EU8217;s Dutch presidency demanding an explanation for the bloodshed.

The large number of dead left barely a family untouched in Beslan. A backwater of the Caucasus, the town was a swirl of grief, anger and uncertainty.

Some vented their anger against Putin. 8216;8216;Putin came here at four this morning,8217;8217; said Boris, whose neighbour and her family disappeared.

8216;8216;He just wanted to show the world how young and handsome he is but he hasn8217;t helped and he won8217;t help and he can8217;t stop this happening again.8217;8217; 8212;Reuters