(2 Sep 2004)

1. Tank driving past on street
2. Various, worried relatives
3. Soldiers
4. People watching
5. Soldiers walking through barrier
6. Various, relatives
7. Set up shot, Lev Tzugayev, Spokesman for Local Authorities in North Ossetia
8. SOUNDBITE: (Russian) Lev Tzugayev, Spokesman for Local Authorities in North Ossetia:
"We have compiled a list of the people we believe are being held hostage and there are 354 names on that list."
9. Various, relatives

STORYLINE:

Heavily armed militants, many strapped with explosives, continued to hold more than 350 hostages including children for a
second day on Thursday inside a provincial Russian school as negotiators scrambled to find a way out of the tense stand-off.

Crowds of distraught relatives and townspeople waited helplessly for news of their neighbours and loved ones, their distress sharpened by the sporadic rattle of gunfire from the cordoned-off crisis site.

The raiders reportedly have threatened to blow up the school if police storm it, but what they wanted and who they were remained unclear.

Talks via phone continued on-and-off throughout the night and early morning, involving well-known paediatrician Leonid Roshal, who aided hostages during the deadly seizure of a Moscow theatre by Chechens in 2002.

Russia's NTV television reported that Roshal, whose participation the militants had demanded, conveyed to them the promise of a safe corridor out, but the offer was refused.

Lev Tzugayev, an aide to the North Ossetian president, said on Thursday morning that so far the talks have not achieved anything.

The school in Beslan, a town of about 30-thousand is in North Ossetia, is near the republic of Chechnya where separatist rebels have been fighting Russian forces since 1999.

Suspicion in the raid fell on Chechen militants although no claim of responsibility has been made.

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