The hostage-takers inside the school in Beslan have warned they will be killing fifty children for each dead militant, and twenty, for each injured one, North Ossetian Interior Minister Kazbek Dzantiyev has said.

Many of the hostages, he said were first and second year students.

An Itar-Tass correspondent reports from the scene one of the terrorists fired a submachine-gun round with tracer bullets a short while ago to set fire to the roof of a nearby building.

The fire has been extinguished by now.

Source: Itar-Tass