AFTER more than 24 hours in the sweltering heat of the school gymnasium in Beslan, one of the boys trapped inside could not take it any longer, writes Peter Conradi.

Summoning up his courage, he approached a hostage taker with a bayonet fixed to his assault rifle and asked him for a drink. It was probably the worst error that he could have made.

“Instead of giving him water, he drove his bayonet through the boy’s body,” said Stanislav Tsarakhov, 10, another captive standing nearby. “I don’t know if he died.”

Details of the incident emerged as children who escaped the siege described how their captors had deliberately deprived them of food and water, repeatedly firing guns into the ceiling to try to silence them. “The hostage takers would hold their machineguns to your temple and said that if there was a lot of noise, they would shoot everyone,” said a girl, who gave her name only as Zalina.

Diana Gadzhinova, 14, who also survived the siege, said that one of the greatest hardships had been the lack of food and drink.

“When we were let out to go to the lavatory, some children would run into a room where there were plants in pots and they would eat them,” she said.

“Others would hide the plants in their underwear and share them with their friends. But the hunger was not as bad as the thirst. Some children couldn’t take it and would urinate into their hand and drink.”

At another point, Gadzhinova said, they were all ordered to lie down. There were so many people packed into the gym that they had to lie on top of each other. “The gunmen warned that if there was an arm or a leg in their way, they would shoot at it without warning,” she said.

For Arsen Khasigov, 11, trapped with his mother, the worst thing was the sleep deprivation. “They kept us awake all the time,” he said. “They would pour our urine on our heads.”

Also horrific was the role played by two “black widows” — Chechen women who turned to terrorism to avenge husbands and brothers killed during the Kremlin’s military clampdown on the breakaway republic.

According to accounts from some captives, the women blew themselves up in the first hours of the siege, killing several men near them. Last night no trace of their bodies had been found.

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