By Richard Ayton
BESLAN, Russia (Reuters) - Russian soldiers battled Chechen separatists on Friday to end a two-day-old school siege as naked children ran out screaming amid explosions and machinegun fire.
A Reuters correspondent saw soldiers carrying children away from the school, some covered in blood, as military helicopters circled overhead and ambulances ferried wounded hostages away, all to the sound of continuous gunfire.
Witnesses said troops had entered the school, whose roof had partly collapsed, according to officials quoted by Interfax. The Tass news agency reported that some 40 children had been evacuated from the school by 1:50 p.m. (0550 EDT).
Interfax news agency reported that some of the group of hostage-takers, believed to number about 40, had tried to break out through crowds of frantic relatives waiting near the school as Russian special forces moved in.
Others reported soldiers firing on fleeing gunmen.
Officials had said some 500 people were being held in the school in North Ossetia, near Chechnya (news - web sites), but released hostages said the number could be nearer to 1,500, lying on top of each other in increasingly desperate conditions.
Children, some half-naked, drank heavily from bottles of water after two days without drink.
Some children lay on stretchers.
It was unclear what had triggered the battle, a few hours after Russia insisted it would not resort to force to free the children, parents and teachers being held for a third day without food or water.
Alexander Dzasokhov, president of the province of North Ossetia, said the 40 or so masked gunmen were demanding an independent Chechnya, the first clear link between them and the decade-long separatist rebellion in the neighboring province.
But he tried to reassure hundreds of fraught parents who spent the night near the school in the town of Beslan, telling reporters: "I tell you frankly and honestly ... the option of force is not being considered."
Reports from some of the women and children released on Thursday painted a grim picture.
"You know, there aren't 350 people (the previous official number) in there, but 1,500 in all. People are lying one on top of another," Zalina Dzandarova, a 27-year-old woman, told the daily Kommersant.
CHILDREN CRYING
One unidentified woman freed on Thursday told Izvestia that during the night children occasionally began to cry:
"Then the fighters would fire in the air to restore quiet. In the morning they told us they would not give us anything more to drink because the authorities were not ready to negotiate.
"When children went to the toilet, some tried to drink from the tap. The fighters stopped them straight away."
Dzasokhov said the captors had made their demands in talks on Thursday with Ruslan Aushev, a moderate former leader of nearby Ingushetia province, who has taken on a mediating role.
"The demands relayed to Aushev yesterday ... were that Chechnya must be an independent state," he said.
The school siege is the latest in a wave of violent attacks in Russia in recent weeks, all linked to Chechen separatists.
Last week, suicide bombers were blamed for the near-simultaneous crash of two passenger planes in which 90 people died. This week, in central Moscow a suicide bomber blew herself up, killing nine people.
Russian media have speculated that the gunmen could belong to separatist forces under field commander Magomed Yevloyev, an Ingush who is believed to have led a mass assault on Ingushetia in June.
With the clock ticking for President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) to end the crisis, security experts warned of a possible bloody end.
Putin, who came to power in 2000 vowing to "wipe out" Chechen militants, pledged to do all he could to save the hostages.
But he refused any suggestion of a compromise on Chechnya remaining part of Russia. Previous ends to hostage crises have ended in huge loss of life.
Izvestia said 860 pupils attended School No.1 in Beslan. But the number of people on the campus would have been swollen by parents and relatives attending the first-day ceremony traditional in Russian schools.
Up to 16 people were believed to have been killed in the early stages of the assault.
(Additional reporting by Oliver Bullough)
This is an atrocity...if they missed.