Beslan massacre 'could have been prevented'

"If orders had been followed, the terrorist act could have been prevented," Alexander Torshin, deputy speaker of the Federation Council, told lawmakers as he outlined preliminary conclusions from a parliamentary inquiry set up in September 2004.

Speaking a day after a panel of experts said officials in charge of coordinating the response to the hostage crisis had made no mistakes, Torshin said that there had been many security deficiencies before and during the three-day standoff that exacerbated it.

"The list of failures and shortcomings is long," Torshin said.

The crisis erupted on September 1, 2004 when Chechen rebels seized a primary school in the southern Russian city of Beslan, taking more than 1,000 people including hundreds of students and their parents arriving for the first day of school hostage.