THE bodybags were stretched out in gruesome rows yesterday at a makeshift mortuary in Vladikavkaz, North Ossetia. The charred, bloody remains of children and adults were clearly visible through the thin, dark-grey plastic. Howls of grief filled the putrid air as relatives converged upon the hospital grounds where the mortuary had been set up on sheets of canvas.

This is where the victims of the Beslan siege have been brought. Last night, observers put the total number of corpses collected here at a minimum of 400.

About 200 bodybags had been brought to the morgue on refrigerated trucks yesterday afternoon from the school where the victims died. Another 34 bodybags, containing the remains of suspected hostage takers, were being closely guarded by Russian soldiers in the school grounds yesterday.

Smoke still hung over the school as President Vladimir Putin visited casualties in hospital as part of his quick, daybreak tour of the stricken town of Beslan.

Last night, Putin made an address to the Russian people. “We have failed to recognise the complexity and dangerous nature of the processes taking place in our own country,” he told them.

“We showed weakness,” said Putin, “and the weak are trampled upon.”

Those relatives still hoping to find their loved ones alive stood outside the hospital, desperately scanning the scrawled lists of the injured. The siege of Beslan’s middle school No 1 is over, but as darkness fell last night the hell of uncertainty continued for hundreds of families.

Photographs of hospitalised children too young, too traumatised or too badly injured to identify themselves were plastered all over the walls. Next to the pictures were brief descriptions: “boy who cannot speak”; “unconscious girl”.

For many of those gathered outside, fear has given way to grief, anger and desperation. One woman was turned away from the wall, shaking and sobbing. A man showed hospital nurses a photograph of a little boy dressed in a smart suit. Dozens of relatives wandered around clutching photographs of their lost children, asking anyone who would listen if they had seen them. The answer was almost always no.

“We run here, we run there, like we’re out of our minds, trying to find out anything we can about them,” said Tsiada Biazrova, 47, whose neighbours’ children had yet to be found yesterday.

Six badly wounded children, the youngest only 20 months old, were flown from Beslan to a hospital in Moscow with burns, gunshot wounds and severe internal injuries.

All over Beslan last night, people gathered in small groups on street corners, talking quietly. Some appeared grim, some angry, all bleary-eyed. Life in the town had all but ground to a halt. Ruslan, a young man, was looking for his wife: “I’ve been searching all day and I can’t find her. Where are our people? No one tells us anything.”

“People are angry. They’re demanding answers,” said Izeta Khablina, 50. “Why shouldn’t they be angry? Their relatives could be dead and they don’t know the answer.”

Anxious relatives milled around Beslan’s cinema, waiting for details of the dead and injured. None was forthcoming. Instead, they were offered a bus to the mortuary.

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