From the tennis shoes and beer bottle, I'd rule out spetsnaz. Probably a local militia or police reserves. 
Who are they?
Maybe we could get some of the Experts who testified to Congress regarding Waco for Another Opinion on whether or not "Bumblebees" are incendiary or safe for firing upon civilians.
I think the prioritizing's interesting.
Lessee ... rescue the hostages or kill the terrorists ... hrm. That's a tough one.
Back in Rwanda as the Belgians were decamping the school at which a thousand or more were finding refuge, the soon-to-be-victims of the "internal civil conflict into which we could not intervene" begged to be machine-gunned to death. Seems they found a certain, quick death far preferable to an agonizing wait and wondering whether they'd be macheted to death or die in some other gruesome brutal Sadistic fashion.
I think this operation sends a message such that Terrorist know they'll go quickly along with the Collateral Damage that, win:win, gets killed either way.
From the tennis shoes and beer bottle, I'd rule out spetsnaz. Probably a local militia or police reserves.
What was on the roof of building no. 39?
Novaya Gazeta has already written about how the Beslan hostages' stories differ from the official portrayal of the assault (see issue no. 74 from October 7th). Russian television has also confirmed that special forces used the incendiary rocket launcher 'Bumblebee' during the assault. A little while ago parliamentarian Arkady Baskayev, a member of the commission investigating the terror act, in an interview with BBC stated that in the course of the school storming, heavily equipped units used grenade and incendiary rocket launchers. Important questions now remain. First: at what stage of the assault - while hostages were still in the school, or when only rebels remained - did they use this particular incendiary weapon, which the Geneva convention forbids 'under any circumstances against any target near a concentrated civilian populace'. And secondly: will this information be officially confirmed or denied?The media was not permitted into the commission meetings. The commission declared a desire to conduct closed hearings. Ruslan Kastuyev, press spokesman for the North Caucasus president, deflected inconvenient questions as best he could:
"Ruslan, is it true that fire-rocket launchers were used during the assault?"Meanwhile, local residents have long since known what the commission has yet to dig up. During the storming of the Beslan school, the special forces used 'Bumblebee' incendiary rocket launchers.
"The commission does not know at this time. It came here in order to find out."
"But Deputat Baskayev said that they were actually used, and he is also a member of the commission."
"Baskayev knows, but at this time the rest do not."* * *
Five-storey buildings on School Alley - the closest to the school. In the first hours after the seizure of the hostages, all of the residents were asked to leave the premesis. Men with rocket launchers sat on the roofs. Corner apartments on the top floors were occupied by snipers and grenadiers. No one lives in these apartments now - they have been almost completely burned out. When the fire-fight began, sparks set fire to curtains and wallpaper. Lower apartments also suffered - they were flooded when the upper-floor fires were put out. The city administration is hurriedly performing the most basic, standard renovations, and is buying residents new furniture.Gregoriy Beroyev's apartment is not a corner apartment. There were no special forces there. Only Gregoriy was in it during the assault; he refused to leave.
"They occupied the apartments on the first of September," Gregoriy recalled. "At first they just sat, but when our leaders said that no one was going to let the children go, they started the assault. They fired on the school. What they did here! They fired so much that I thought the walls were going to fall in."
I asked him what they were shooting, rocket launchers?
"No, the guys with the rockets were sitting on the roof."One can easily reach the roof of building 39 through the garret. On the roof, just past the stairwell-housing, a bunch of rags are strewn about. A lot of carelessly opened, unlabelled cans are there, as well as an entire mountain of sugar in single-use packets. Metallic brackets of television antennas. If one runs their hand across them, it comes back soiled with soot. Rocket exhaust singed them, confirms Elbrus Tedtov, a former tank crewman and now chief of a company of SWAT police. Under the rubberoid covering, one can find a few shell casings, but someone had time to do a clean up. A new broom is laying nearby.
One by one, men in civilian clothes call on the inhabitants of the surrounding homes, asking them not to talk too much. Police officer Aleksandr P. said that after the assault, he was brought in for questioning:
FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH
"They said to me: in one of your houses there were some television people. Where is the cassette? And I said: you should ask the them. But they kept demanding the cassette anyway."Our military specialist, Vyacheslav Izmailov, got in touch with a member of the parliamentary security committee, Colonel-General Arkadiy Baskayev, who works in a sub-committee of the commission studying the activities of law enforcement and special forces during the period of the Beslan school hostages' seizure and liberation.
"Arkadiy Georgiyevich, a few days ago during a radio interview, you said that heavy artillery was used against the terrorists in Beslan.
"It wasn't quite like that. The 58th Army command in Vladikavkaz reported the use of heavy ordnance, but their subdivisions were only put in action during the liberation of the hostages, as well as in explosives clean up afterwards."
"Was heavy ordnance used while there were still hostages in the school?"
"No. Right now we are working in Beslan in order to find out, in the most minute detail, how the responsible parties, the staff that worked to free the hostages, law enforcement agencies, the military, how everyone who took part in this operation acted."
"Will the results of your commission's work be published?"
"They will be published in full. Here, there can be no secrets, with the exception, perhaps, of certain details concerning technical equipment which could be used sometime again in the future, and should not be disclosed to the terrorists. We also cannot publish the names of special unit officers who are active in the destruction of terrorists."
Are you suggesting that the Russian forces were moving in to butcher the people? That a quick shooting by the terrorists was mercy then being rescued by your own people? I have seen some, to say mildly, strange logic on your part, but this is beyond the pale. This borders lunacy.
To say the operation was well planned or carried out would be a far stretch but to say the hostages were better off with the terrorists then being rescued in what ever fashion is Sadistic (as you highlighted that word yourself).