Rebels planned attack, hid weapons in school basement earlier

Russian newspapers and some politicians have questioned how a dozen guerrillas could take so many hostages and then stand up to hundreds of Russian troops during a grisly raid that lasted for more than six hours and killed more than 322 people.

The volatile Caucasus region is notorious for its tight road security caused by a decade of warfare in separatist Chechnya and flaring conflicts in other nearby multi-ethnic republics.

But the media is filled with reports of the road police letting just about anyone pass through for a bribe.

The head of the North Ossetian security service said that he was certain now that the guerrillas had located their point of attack well in advance and did not simply rush in on the school on the first day of class on the spur of the moment.

"We found a large amount of explosives and mines, and their number says that this attack was planned in advance," Valery Andreyev was quoted as saying by Interfax.

"The armaments were hidden on the school grounds," he said.

He gave no other details but other news reports fleshed out the story.

They quoted an unnamed source as saying that the militia first scouted out two other schools before settling on School Number One -- the main one in Beslan -- because it was undergoing major reconstruction work over the summer.