According to Lev Dzugayev, head of the North Ossetian President’s Information and Analytical Department, a group of 26 women and children was released. The officials of the command center are asking the freed women for information about the hostage takers and the situation inside the school. Mr. Dzugayev said they were released unconditionally.

Ruslan Aushev, the former President of Ingushetia, helped to negotiate the release, according to Mr. Dzugayev. “Our main concern and task is to free the children,” he stressed. According to him, negotiations with the attackers are underway to pass medicines and food to the hostages. Mr. Dzugayev called on the families of the hostages to keep quiet. He said it would help the command center act more effectively.

The names of the 26 released hostages, mostly women and children, have been announced. A list of their names was posted in the city’s house of culture, not far from the besieged school. An RBC correspondent in Beslan says hundreds of people whose relatives are trapped in the school, gathered around the building. According to the command center, the situation remains tense.

According to preliminary information, terrorists refuse to start direct talks with doctor Leonid Roshal, a source in the command center told RBC. He said the possibility of a direct contact between the terrorists and the representatives of Arab television channels was being discussed.

Earlier, it was reported that there were infants among the hostages. They were taken to the school by their parents, who accompanied their older children to school on September 1, the first day of the new school year. There were also reports that a group of 15 schoolchildren managed to escape. At the time of the attack, they were smoking in a boiler room outside the main school building. So far, the hostage takers have refused to take water, food and medicines for the hostages.