In a new official account of the attack, Russia's chief law enforcement official portrayed a band of cutthroat kidnappers who argued among themselves and whose leader enforced discipline by executing three of his crew.
In a televised meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin, the official, Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov, reported that not all the attackers realized that their mission was to seize a school and that one of them was shot when he objected to kidnapping children. Two women in the gang were killed, as a gesture of intimidation, when the bombs strapped to their bodies were detonated by remote control, Mr. Ustinov said. "He did it himself?" Mr. Putin asked, referring to the gang leader, who went by the nickname Colonel and who was described as a short man with a red beard and freckles. "Yes, himself," Mr. Ustinov replied, almost in a whisper.
Mr. Ustinov said 326 hostages were killed, although only 210 bodies have been identified because many were badly mutilated. This total was lower than the earlier official toll of 338. He said another 727 people had been wounded, leaving only a very few hostages unhurt from a total of 1,200 he said had been held. |