by Yana Dlugy
BESLAN, Russia, Sept 7 (AFP) - They can neither nurse their children back to health nor get closure from burying their dead: some families are in agony as they remain without word on the fate of loved ones still unaccounted for in the Beslan hostage tragedy.
"Right now, he`s not alive and he`s not dead," said Boris Tigiev, the father of 14-year-old son Soslan who was among the hostages held for three days in a school here and whose fate remains unknown.
Tigiev described how his daughter, who was also held captive, fell to the ground when she was hit by shrapnel as hostages began fleeing from the school after an explosion triggered a storm of violence.
She had started running with her brother when she was hit and went down, but she survived and said afterwards that she clearly recalled seeing Soslan as he escaped out a shattered window ahead of her and continued to run for his life.
"What sister wouldn`t recognize her own brother?" Tigiev asked.
Four days after the horrific climax of the hostage siege, Tigiev still has no word on what has happened to his son.
And as the town of Beslan continued to bury its dead for a third straight day, Tigiev and dozens of other relatives of the victims remain hostage themselves to the anguish of not knowing what has become of their kin.
The families, many of them clutching photographs of their missing children, held an emotional meeting here Tuesday with local authorities still unable to offer precise information on the whereabouts of their loved ones.
Alexander Panov, the assistant public prosecutor in Beslan, said there were still 107 bodies in a morgue in the neighboring city of Vladikavkaz that had not been identified.
He instructed those families still without word of their loved ones to go to Vladikavkaz where a special clinic had been set up to take blood samples from them and try to match them with the unidentified remains.
"Please come at 2:00 pm ... because it is possible that your relatives are among those 107," Panov told the distraught families gathered outiside a municipal building that has become a makeshift information center.
Many took up the request but found little comfort as they examined corpses, many of them badly disfigured, that were lined up in rows of black body bags at the morgue in Vladikavkaz.
"I have no idea where she is," said Poprataz Gatsalov as he searched in despair for his 12-year-old daughter. "Maybe she is lying in shock somewhere. But I`ve been everywhere and I just can`t find her."
Gatsalov said he had spoke to a number of his daughter`s classmates who survived the hostage siege, all of whom said they saw her as she fled the school with them.
Taimuraz Murtazov, a senior law enforcement official in the region, said local police in Beslan had begun collecting photographs of those still missing.
Those photographs would be matched against bodies in morgues as well as with unidentified patients in several hospitals in the region and in Moscow in the hopes of finding some of those still unaccounted for, he said.
Mzivinari Ochishvili, whose 12-year-old daughter Bella is missing, said: "We have been everywhere, in all the hospitals and in all the morgues.
"A classmate of hers saw her being taken away in an ambulance and we haven`t heard of her since."
The spokesman for the Ossetian president said that at least seven of the ex-hostages were seen alive by relatives after the raid by security forces and were still missing.
Meanwhile a makeshift cemetery in Beslan overflowed for a second day with grieving families burying their dead children and adult relatives.
Authorities said another 70 burials were scheduled Tuesday while 115 were held Monday.