LONDON, Sept 8 (AFP) - The hostages held at the Number One school in Beslan, southern Russia had little chance of escaping alive or unharmed, given how much firepower and determination their captors had, a British expert said Wednesday.
"I don't think so," said Francis Tusa, publisher of the London-based military affairs newsletter Defence and Analysis, when asked if the hostages had much of a chance.
"If (the hostage takers) would get away having creating chaos, it is a success; if they die killing people, they win whichever way it happens," Tusa told AFP after Russian television aired startling video of the hostage-taking.
Russian security forces faced daunting obstacles not only in dealing with the "huge" quantity of explosives present, but in rescuing the hostages who were distributed in different rooms, he said.
"There were at least two or three other rooms full of people being held hostage," Tusa said. "If it had been just one room, you could probably try and plan a rescue."
"Would you like to try and plan to storm three, four, five, six rooms all with that amount of explosives?" he added.
"We saw films of people with suicide belts, if you've got people like that, some hostages are going to die."
Tusa described the shakey video, taken by the hostage-takers in the school gym, as a "deliberate piece of propaganda".
Western security forces may have handled the siege better, particularly by putting a proper security cordon around the school, but would have still had great trouble resolving it, he said.
"The idea that any Western (security force) would have been able to achieve a bloodless conclusion is, I think, very very optimistic," he said.
Some 1,200 people, including hundreds of children, were held hostage in the southern Russian town of Beslan by armed militants demanding independence for the Russian republic of Chechnya.
Officials sources said some 323 people died during the hostage crisis itself, while another 13 passed away in hospitals afterwards. The toll does not include the 31 hostage-takers killed.
Some 705 people were wounded.