MAINSTREAM MEDIA REPORTS: - 

• Local police may have helped terrorists plan Russian siege - The militants who seized a school in Russia, killing more than 350 people may have had help from local police, an official admitted yesterday.

• Police suspected of complicity in school siege - (The hostage takers) could have had accomplices among police officers, said Valery Andreyev, head of the North Ossetian Department of the Federal Security Service. He said initial investigation of the attackers' route suggested a conspiracy involving the police. At the same time, he did not rule out that the police officers might have been forced to help the terrorists.

• Beslan massacre 'could have been prevented' - The Beslan school massacre which left hundreds dead, including 186 children, could have been averted if government warnings had been heeded, Russian politicians were told today. Alexander Torshin, head of a Russian parliamentary commission investigating last year’s Beslan school tragedy, in which 331 people died, said that if orders had been followed, the deaths could have been prevented.

• MPs lay blame for school siege on Beslan officials: Police ignored repeated warnings, inquiry says / Victims' relatives call for the negligent to be named - Police and regional government officials could have prevented the Beslan school siege, a Russian parliamentary inquiry found yesterday in a report that stopped short of blaming the Kremlin.

• Mothers of Beslan condemn 'cover-up' - Relatives of the children killed in the Beslan siege reacted angrily yesterday after an inquiry cleared the security services of using excessive force while trying to rescue the hostages. They accused a parliamentary commission of perpetuating a cover-up that they said was ordered by the state as soon as Chechen extremists seized more than 1,000 hostages at the town's School No 1 in September last year.

• Terrorists Got Orders From Abroad; Did Not Speak Chechen - Terrorists who seized a school in North Ossetia's Beslan, September 1, were receiving orders from abroad throughout the three suspense-laden days, says Aslanbek Aslakhanov, President Vladimir Putin's adviser for North Caucasian affairs.

• Russia hostage takers argued before explosion: Chechen gave orders by phone, investigators say - NAZRAN, Russia, Sept. 6 - The guerrillas who took over a school in southern Russia last week argued heatedly with each other over whether to abandon the siege in the moments leading up to the firestorm of explosions and shooting that killed hundreds of children and adults, Russian officials said Monday.

• Russia school seizure was long planned - MOSCOW (AP) — Militants appear to have planned their seizure of a Russian school carefully, starting months earlier and sneaking weapons into the building in advance. Still, some of the raiders may not have known what they were getting into and were appalled to find they were holding children hostage.

• Another journalist held amid fears of media crackdown -  Russian authorities have detained the Moscow bureau chief of the satellite TV channel al-Arabiya on his way to Moscow from Beslan, where he was covering the hostage crisis. Amro Abdel Hamid, an Egyptian who holds Russian citizenship, was stopped at the airport in the southern Russian city of Mineralniye Vody, according to reports. Al-Arabiya was informed the journalist would be held for two days, but has not been told why he is being detained. The arrest came amid fears of a crackdown on the media in Russia, following criticism of the government's handling of the Beslan school siege.

• Angry Beslan Mothers Blame Putin, Demand Trial for Authorities - 15 members of the Beslan Mothers Committee continued their protest in the building of North Ossetia’s Supreme Court, remaining there till Wednesday morning. The women accused the authorities of incompetence and corruption.

• Regional Officials Says Investigators Covering up Beslan School Siege Blunders - Russian forces who tried to free hostages from a school in Beslan last year were poorly led, but an inquiry into the causes of the bloodbath that ended the siege will absolve those in command, a regional official, who heads a probe into the tragedy, said on Tuesday.

• Beslan Mother Knows What Russian Investigators Won’t Speak About - The Beslan Mothers’ Committee is not happy with the way that the investigation into Russia’s deadliest hostage siege is going. It has complained of lies, and now its chairperson, Susanna Dudiyeva, has asked that President Vladimir Putin not attend the upcoming memorial. Dudiyeva, like a lot of mothers who were there and who lost their children in the attack, sees negligence on the part of the officials as a major reason why so many people were killed.

• Beslan Survivors Say Men in Police Uniforms Helped Hostage-Takers Flee - Many gunmen who had taken hundreds of schoolchildren and their parents hostage in the South Russian town of Beslan a year ago owe their escape from the school stormed by the security forces to people dressed in police uniforms, a former hostage, Inga Kharebova, told a court where the only hostage-taker detained by the authorities — Nurpasha Kulayev — is currently facing trial.

• Russian Security Services Facilitated Beslan Raid — Basayev - The man behind the Beslan school siege said Tuesday a failed Russian special services sting had allowed his militants a free passage into the region to conduct the attack that killed 330 people almost a year ago, Reuters news agency reports.

• THE BESLAN SIEGE: Aching to Know - A year later, witnesses ask whether Russian forces are partly to blame for the bloody outcome of a hostage crisis. The town wants full disclosure.

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA REPORTS: -

FURTHER IMPORTANT RESEARCH: -

• WIKIPEDIA - Beslan school hostage crisis

If you have any news links or material pertaining to the 'Beslan Siege' please send us your links or articles via the following e-mail link: -