Some 132 children are among the hostages seized on Wednesday at
a school in the southern Russian republic of North Ossetia, the
Itar-Tass said, quoting officials of the crisis management
center.
The officials said the figure has been compiled after
parents and relatives helped specify the numbers of pupils who went
into the school on the first day of the academic year early
Wednesday morning.
The report did not say how many adults are being held.
Earlier, North Ossetian Interior Ministry spokesman, Ismel
Shaov, said that up to 150 people are being held hostage by the
attackers.
Up to 30 attackers with explosive belts and guns stormed the
school in the town of Beslan as a large number of parents were
bringing their children to a ceremony marking the start of the new
school year.
Itar-Tass said seven people who were wounded when the raid began
died of their wounds in hospitals that brought the figure of killed
civilians up to eight. In addition, at least one rebel was killed
in a gunfight with police in the early stages of the seizure.
The North Ossetian health ministry, however, denied the report,
saying four people were killed and ten others were wounded.
Russia has called for convening an immediate UN Security Council
meeting following the school hostage-taking crisis.
"This session could take place in several hours, when it is
nighttime in Moscow," Andrei Denisov, Russian Permanent
Representative to the UN, told Russian television.
(Xinhua News Agency September 2, 2004)
