by Yana Dlugy
BESLAN, Russia, Sept 3 (AFP) - Militants freed 26 women and toddlers but kept hundreds more locked up in a southern Russian school without food for the third day Friday in a crisis that President Vladimir Putin said should not be resolved by force in the short term.
As dawn broke, so did gunfire and the realisation by panicked mothers -- their faces contorting in tears -- that their children were trapped in the cold and surrounded by masked guerrillas and no clear government rescue plan.
Taimuzar, one of many here who believes up to 1,000 people may be in the school and not the 330 reported by officials, said he has not eaten or slept for three days.
"How can I sleep? They are not sleeping. How can I eat? They are not eating," said the man, whose sister and her two daughters are trapped inside.
There were stirring scenes Thursday as gun-toting men in camouflage gear carried out crying newborns who had been herded into the school by armed rebels along with their mothers and smartly-dressed children who had been lined up to celebrate their first day in school.
One of the released women, a nanny, brought out an infant only to return back inside because her own children were not allowed out.
"This is just a drop in the ocean when you consider how many are still inside," said Leonid Roshal, a famed Russian pediatrician who is helping lead the negotiations.
His efforts to get food and water to the hostages have been spurned by at least 20 distrustful guerrillas whose demands remain unknown but are widely believed to be protesting Putin's war in separatist Chechnya.
One survivor told the Kommersant daily that "people were lying on top of each other" in the gym and another that people were not moving around to conserve energy.
"They (the hostage takers) are calling themselves Chechens ... and not taking off their masks. They also said that their children were killed by the Russians and that they have nothing to lose."
Putin -- who has used force to resolve similar standoffs in the past and refused to negotiate with the rebels -- admitted the crisis was the most serious he has faced yet since being elected in 2000.
"All these actions are aimed not only against specific Russian citizens but against Russia as a whole," Putin said, adding that Russia would do all in its power to prevent further destabilization in the Caucasus region.
He added: "The most important thing is to safeguard and protect the lives of those held hostage."
The hostage-takers threatened Wednesday to blow up the school if their demands were not met.
One official who spoke to Russian television overnight said the militants had been offered safe passage to Chechnya and a proposal to exchange the children held hostage for adults. That information was not later substantiated.
Lev Dzugayev, a spokesman for the president of the Russian republic of North Ossetia, said the release of the women and children was a positive signal.
"This is the first positive result that came about as a result of negotiations led by Ruslan Aushev," a former leader of the Caucasus republic of Ingushetia which borders Chechnya, Dzugaev told reporters.
No official has yet apportioned responsibility for the hostage taking. But it drew comparisons to previous hostage seizures in the Caucasus and Moscow carried out by Chechen rebels.
The most spectacular of those was the capture of some 800 people at a Moscow theater in October 2002. That standoff ended three days after it began and resulted in the deaths of more than 40 militants and 129 hostages.
Russian news agencies said 11 people were killed, including one of the militants, when the school here was seized early Wednesday, the first day of school throughout Russia.
Witnesses saw the bodies of four men being thrown out the window after their apparent execution.
Russians were reeling from a week of attacks that began on August 25 with a bombing at a bus station followed hours later by apparent suicide bomb attacks that brought down two passenger airliners.
On Tuesday, a female suicide bomber killed nine people including herself when she set off her explosives outside a crowded Moscow subway station.
The attacks have killed a total of 111 people and left more than 50 wounded.