Here's what appears to have happened at the school, going by the latest reports I've read in the Russian media.
The storm of the building was unplanned. Spetsnaz and Alpha (the elite special forces groups) were rehearsing the siege in a building similar to the school 30 km from Beslan. What happened was that, in addition to the police, soldiers and special forces guys surrounding the school, it had also been surrounded by a mob of ouraged and armed Ossetians, probably half the town.
It appears that a group of men were approaching the school in order to remove the corpses from the lawn, as had been arranged with the hostage-takers. At that point, according to hostages, a bomb the terrorists had cleverly placed atop a basketball hoop in the gym fell and exploded. Some of the gunmen in the school heard the explosion and decided that the approaching men were part of an attempt to storm the school and began firing at them. At that point, a group of kids said "fuck this, we're getting out of here," jumped at the windows, and began to run away. Gunmen in the school then began firing at the fleeing children. In response, the crowd of townpeopls began firing over the children's heads at the school.
At this point the special forces guys rushed the school. Unfortunately, the outraged townspeople followed them to try to take justice into their own hands -- in the words of one SF guy, "What the fuck? I didn't know who was a terrorist and who wasn't!" Apparently the mob did seize two of the terrorists. One of them was rescued by the SF, and the other was ripped limb from limb.
They interviewed one of the two surviving terrorists on TV, who came across as a complete pussy ("don't kill me! I want to live! I didn't shoot anybody!" Jesus Christ.). He said he would tell them anything they wanted, as long as they didn't leave him alone with the relatives of the children. I suspect he and the other one will be interrogated and then die in prison of mysteriously acquired internal injuries.
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