Rows of graves mark town's grief

By Peter Finn and Susan B. Glasser
The Washington Post

SERGEY PONOMAREV / AP Some of the victims of the Beslan school siege were laid to rest in rows of fresh graves yesterday. A total of 120 burials were scheduled yesterday in the town cemetery and adjoining fields.

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The field adjoining the old graveyard here was a panorama of gaping holes, some so wide they were really pits because they had to hold three or more bodies from one family.

From early morning, hundreds of local volunteers and soldiers had dug this wet, stony ground. The rows of graves extended nearly 200 yards, and still more graves will need to be dug for today and the day after and the day after, as the last of the hundreds of dead from School No. 1 are finally identified.

By late morning, the funeral processions were arriving one after another, winding their way through the chaotic traffic and milling pedestrians under a dark sky that poured without pause. The coffins, some open, some closed, were hoisted onto the shoulders of grim-faced men who fought to find their footing in a sea of muck.

Among the first buried were Zinaida Kudziyeva, 42, and her 10-year-old daughter, Madina Tomayeva. Relatives said they tried to flee when the first explosions went off and were caught in firing between militants and Russian forces.

"They couldn't run away. They didn't have time," said Irakly Khosulev, a relative from nearby Vladikavkaz. "Someone should answer for this."

More than 100 people were buried in the Beslan field yesterday, Christians and Muslims alike, and there weren't enough priests or imams. And so the final words of remembrance and farewell were often uttered by relatives, family elders, perhaps, who stood over the coffins and addressed the mourners crowding around.

"You had dreams, Natashenka, you had dreams," said Vladimir Povomaryov, before the body of Natalia Rudenok, an art teacher, was lowered into a grave lined with red brick in the local tradition.

"You are all martyrs. Our hearts ache for you."

The bodies came from their homes in Beslan where priests went door to door to say hasty prayers over the corpses before moving onto the next afflicted family. The coffins were then loaded onto the backs of trucks and vans for the short but congested trip to the edge of town.

In one five-minute period around 2.30 p.m., 14 coffins arrived in succession and then each funeral party broke away to its piece of earth denoted by wooden makers and printed paper bearing the names of the dead.
 
Some of the dead were visible until these last moments: a woman, her red-colored hair brushed back and parted over her face; a young man in a Sunday suit; a shrouded child.

Sveta Aylyarova, a 6-year-old first-grader, arrived in an open coffin, its top carried separately by six men. Her body was veiled in lace and atop her legs was her pink teddy bear.

"She was a beautiful, smart little girl," said Khazbi Aylyarov, the oldest relative standing in front of the coffin, restraining his grief so he could get the words out.

And then the coffins were shuttered with final, haunting bangs before they were placed in the red-bricked holes. Pieces of concrete were lowered on top before dirt was shoveled into the hole by young men, rain streaming down their faces.

Some graves, like that of the Kozyrevs, where Alla, Timur, and Elina — mother, son and daughter — were buried side by side, were so large that dump trucks were used to fill the hole.

"It is our blood here," said Elbrus Bulayev, a worker at a local vodka distillery who spent the morning digging graves under a hard rain. "The sky is crying."

The bereavement was interrupted by political speeches that bellowed across the open ground from a podium that was set up 50 yards from the graves.

President Vladimir Putin did not attend, but he was shown at a televised meeting in the Kremlin with several of his ministers. "In spirit and in our hearts we are all there today, in North Ossetia, in Beslan," he said, before leading the group in a minute of silence.

As despairing families continued to put loved ones into the ground, loudspeakers broadcast a politician's voice as he thanked the mayor of Moscow and the governor of St. Petersburg, among others, for coming to North Ossetia to express their condolences. He continued sonorously with a plea for unity.

"The bosses want to be heard," said Valery Dzarukayev, contemptuously, as the speech wafted across the fresh graves.

But mourners, for the most part, kept their disdain in check and simply left the graveyard without turning their heads to the nearby rally.

At School No. 1, mourners wandered through broken glass, collapsed ceilings and puddles of water. Bouquets were placed on the sills of the gymnasium.

A door smeared with blood lay on its side in one room; in another room, children's shoes were scattered among notebooks, textbooks and papers. Outside, in a book of condolences, was scrawled the message: "Children, forgive us adults."

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.