The Beslan school massacre which left hundreds dead, including 186 children, could have been averted if government warnings had been heeded, Russian politicians were told today.

Alexander Torshin, head of a Russian parliamentary commission investigating last year’s Beslan school tragedy, in which 331 people died, said that if orders had been followed, the deaths could have been prevented.

The crisis erupted on September 1, 2004 when Chechen rebels seized a primary school in the southern Russian city of Beslan, taking more than 1,000 people including hundreds of students and their parents arriving for the first day of school hostage.

A tense stand-off ended three days later after an explosion in the school triggered a fierce firefight between security forces and dozens of hostage-takers, causing huge numbers of casualties. Thirty-one hostage takers also died in the violence.

Responsibility for the attack on the school was claimed by Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, but families of the victims have said that authorities at all levels of government and law enforcement bear a large share of blame for the tragedy due to incompetence.

Telegrams were sent from the Russian Interior ministry less than two weeks before the militants’ raid instructing the police department in North Ossetia, where Beslan is located, to beef up security on the first day of school.

But Mr Torshin, deputy speaker of the Federation Council, told lawmakers, as he outlined preliminary conclusions from a parliamentary inquiry set up in September 2004, that only a single policewoman was posted outside the school and was eventually taken hostage.

Mr Torshin also said: "The counter-terrorist operation was plagued by shortcomings. Many law enforcement officers did not know how to act in an emergency situation."

He accused police and security officials in North Ossetia and the neighbouring region of Ingushetia, from where the militants had launched their raid, of "negligence and carelessness."

But the families of the dead were left angry with these early conclusions.

Savkuz Dzhusov, who witnessed the storming of the school from his nearby apartment building in Beslan, said that he would pay no attention to Mr Torshin’s report.

Mr Dzhusov said: "It is all fiction. They will lie again and nobody will be held accountable for the dead children."

Meanwhile, Susanna Dudiyeva, head of the Beslan Mothers’ Committee, said that "the most painful questions are left unanswered by Torshin’s report".

The rebels, who were demanding that Russian troops withdraw from nearby Chechnya after a decade of separatist fighting there, had crossed heavily-policed territory to reach Beslan, and victims’ relatives are convinced that they received help from corrupt officials.

Families of the hostages have strongly criticised the rescue operation, saying hostages died needlessly because special forces soldiers used flame-throwers, grenade launchers and tanks against the militants.

Mr Torshin countered this by insisting their use saved law enforcement officers’ lives, and he said that there were no longer any hostages in the building when the heavy weaponry was used.

Jeremy Page, Mocsow Correspondent of The Times, said: "Locally, this issue is highly politicised.

"Relatives of victims blame both local and federal authorities for allowing hostage takers to get across the borders and take the school as well as for messing up the rescue operation and covering up afterwards.

"But nationally, it is not so much of an issue any more."

Page attributed this to the Kremlin’s influence over the national media.

He added: "No significant federal official has been held responsible for any of this … the security lapses or the rescue operation."

Page said that human rights groups and relatives of victims still felt there were federal officials who should be held to account.

Discussing the security action taken by Russian since Beslan, he added: "Perhaps on a smaller scale, there is better security (at schools). But it is not enough to prevent this happening again. Schools are still vulnerable targets."

He described how there had been there parallel investigations into the tragedy, with only one so far, by the North Ossestian parliament, laying part of the blame on the Russian authorities' doorsteps.

Asked about the possibility of the issue rearing its head on the national political landscape, he said: "For that to happen, you need to give opposition politicians and NGOs (non-governmental organisations) the freedom the national media outlets to criticise the Government."