Grief-stricken mothers and fathers trudged through mud and rain on Monday to bury children slaughtered in a Russian school siege as criticism mounted over the way the Kremlin handled the crisis.
At least 335 people, half of them children, were killed during a bloodbath that ended last week's 53-hour siege of the school by Chechen separatists.
In Beslan, not far from Muslim Chechnya but religiously and ethnically distinct, authorities took over land the size of a soccer pitch next to the cemetery to find room to bury the dead. Mourners in black bore dozens of open coffins filled with flowers, their wails sometimes drowned out by the drone of mechanical diggers excavating yet more graves. A mother and her two children shared one grave.
"I feel terrible. I had a sister here who died. My other sister is in hospital. What can I feel? Do you hear people crying? That's how I feel," said Beslan resident Rustan on the first of two days of national mourning.
Troops have tightened security at North Ossetia's boundaries with other regions in case fury over the carnage should stoke tensions in the Caucasus region of southern Russia.
But there has been anger too at the chaotic storming of the school by Russian troops and at President Vladimir Putin's assertion that Russia was the victim of "international terror" rather than home-grown Chechen extremists.
"The official claim that international terrorism is behind the Beslan tragedy is a trick designed to divert responsibility away from the Kremlin," said liberal politician Boris Nemtsov. Putin, a former KGB spy, came to power four years ago promising to stamp out separatism and build a strong state. In the last weeks, two airliners blew up in mid-air and a suicide bomber killed nine pedestrians near a Moscow metro station.
"We are absolutely defenceless in the air, in the metro, in our own capital and outside it," Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independent in the State Duma lower house, wrote in Nezavisimaya daily.
The gutted school gymnasium, where the rebels held more than 1,000 children, parents and teachers attending the first day of term, has turned into an unofficial shrine. Deprived of water by their abductors, children stripped to their underwear and drank their own urine in the stifling gym.
Bottles of water, flowers, and pictures of missing children have been placed among the rubble. Bottles were also placed on the graves on the outskirts of Beslan, a town so small nearly everyone has a relative to grieve for.
Across Russia, flags flew at half mast and television stations cancelled entertainment programmes - the second period of national mourning in as many weeks following the death of 90 people in the twin plane crashes.
Condolences poured in from around the world. In Italy, thousands put candles in their windows on Saturday in memory of the dead after a text message from a university teacher suggesting the idea was forwarded thousands of times.
As burials proceeded, 207 other bodies were yet to be identified. Some reports say there are more than 200 missing, though officials say the number refers to those unidentified and does not suggest there will be a big increase in the death toll.
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