"If there were just adults inside then everyone would already be dead. But these are children and I hope that hope will not abandon them," said Georgy whose three nephews and a niece are trapped in the school.

Hundreds of relatives of the hostages spent a sleepless night gathered in the House of Culture, 150 metres from the school in this town in the southern Republic of North Ossetia, just a stone's throw away from strife-torn Chechnya.

They waited for news in silence, which was occasionally broken by the crackle of gunfire. An official reassures them the children are being well treated, negotiations start but appear to bring no result.

Luda, a 53-year-old widow, whose two teenage children are among possibly hundreds seized on the first day of the school year on Wednesday, sits on a bench and can barely bring herself to talk. Surrounded by friends who have come to give support, her head is bowed in desperation.

The only noise outside in this atmosphere of high tension is the rumbling of the generators from the hordes of television wagons parked outside. Close to dawn, the abductors and security forces start exchanging fire, prompting the families to rush to the windows of the building.

Starved of precise information, people feed themselves with rumour. One woman says she is sure that the children have been given something to eat, another says they have nothing. A hostage's father claims the security forces have tried to storm the school.

While official estimates for the numbers of children, teachers and parents trapped inside have ranged between 100 to 400, some of the relatives say that some 1,000 could have been there when the extremists attacked.

"I was in front of the school and the police came to sort out the list of the people who had disappeared. This morning my brother-in-law said that there were 1,007 names on that list," said Larissa Pukhaeva, 33.