World press mourns school siege victims

Some 250 people were killed, many of them children, and 700 injured, when Russian troops stormed a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, where 1,000 hostages had been held by heavily-armed militants demanding independence for Chechnya.

The bulk of world coverage focused on the horror of the killings, with strong words for Russian President Vladimir Putin, criticising his botched handling of the siege and hardline stance on rebel Chechnya.

"Mother Russia's agony," read the headline in Britain's The Times. "Slaughter of the children", said The Daily Telegraph, while The Independent said simply "The blackest day", below a shot of a body being draped in a sheet.

Putin came to power as a strongman who would sort out Chechnya, Britain's Daily Telegraph noted.

"One war and many terrorist atrocities later, he seems further from his goal than ever," it charged in an editorial, while The Independent warned that "the very worst response would be a punitive crackdown on Chechnya."

"Dazed, shaken and bloodied," headlined the International Herald Tribune, which warned in an editorial that Putin had no choice but to negotiate with Chechen separatist leaders.

"Unless he now opens a serious negotiating channel with legitimate Chechen leaders, the situation can only get worse," the paper said.

"Carnage," headlined France's Liberation daily, which argued that "the master of the Kremlin has fallen into a trap" and that Putin's hard line on Chechnya had "opened the way for Islamic terrorism".

France's Le Figaro newspaper criticised what it called Russia's "tradition of force," saying that in Russia's recent history "not a single hostage-taking had ended without dozens of civilian deaths."