Dramatic video footage of inside the school in Beslan during the siege has been aired on Russian television

Dramatic video footage of inside the school in Beslan during the siege has been aired on Russian television. It shows adults and children packed into the school gymnasium as heavily-armed, masked men walk around the room. Explosives, apparently wired and ready for use, lie on the floor while others are looped around basketball hoops at either end of the gym. Russia's NTV network, the first to broadcast the video clip, said it had been recorded by the hostage-takers. The network did not explain how it obtained the pictures. The footage shows hundreds of hostages crowded into the gym - many with hands above their heads. They are still fully clothed - although fanning themselves in the heat - suggesting the video was shot soon after the school was seized. The camera zooms in on one hostage-taker, standing next to a young boy, with his boot on what NTV said was a book rigged with a detonator. A woman hostage-taker, clad in a black dress and headscarf, is seen in the doorway holding a pistol. There is also footage of blood on the floor, and a fire in another building on the school premises.