When a mother was made to choose between her two children

Guerrillas armed with automatic rifles and explosive belts allowed 26 women and children to leave. About a dozen mothers, like Dzandarova, were allowed to take only one child and forced to leave another behind.

‘‘I didn’t want to make this choice,’’ a stunned-looking Dzandarova, 27, said in the reception room of her father-in-law’s comfortable house a few miles away from the school. ‘‘People say they are happy that my son and I are saved. But how can I be happy if my daughter’s still inside there?’’

Violence often randomly selects its victims, but seldom is a mother forced to choose to save one child at the cost of leaving another behind, possibly to face death.

‘‘They said they would let us go only after the (Russian) troops are withdrawn from Chechnya,’’ said Dzandarova, who said the attackers identified themselves as Chechens. ‘‘I said we have nothing to do with that, but they wouldn’t listen.’’

Her description provided one of the first accounts of happenings inside the school, where Dzandarova said as many as 1,000 children and parents were sitting in a gym laced with explosives. On Wednesday, Dzandarova was taking her daughter to the first day of first grade with 2-year-old Alan in tow. As the students and parents began lining up grade-by-grade, they saw the attackers sweeping into the school.

Dzandarova and her children ran to hide in a classroom, but were later rounded up with the other hostages into the school gym. ‘‘Everyone was ordered to sit down, and they began to set up booby traps around the perimeter, right in front of our eyes. They had lots of guns and explosives with them.’’

At first, she said, everyone was allowed to drink water from the tap at the school. But the hostage takers soon cut off that privilege, she said, angered that several local officials, including the presidents of North Ossetia and nearby Ingushetia, did not come to the school to meet with them.

Without water, the dry powdered milk the guerrillas supplied for the children had to be spooned into their mouths.

Much of the time, she said, the guerrillas appeared tense: running around the room, waving their guns in the hostages’ faces, shouting at them to sit still and stop talking.

When Alan began to cry with hunger, Dzandarova was allowed to join several other mothers in an adjacent changing room, which had its own water and was several degrees cooler. But after a former local political leader visited the school Thursday, the women who were living in the changing room were told there was ‘‘good news:’’ they would be released.

‘‘They said pack your things quickly, and take your babies with you,’’ Dzandarova said. Dzandarova had both Alan and Alana with her in the changing room, and made a snap decision to pass Alana to her 16-year-old sister-in-law, who was also a hostage.

But the guerrillas saw through the ruse and refused to allow her to take the older child. ‘‘Alana was clinging to me and holding my hand firmly. But they separated us, and said, ‘You go with the boy. Your sister can stay here with her.’ I cried. I begged them. Alana cried. The women around us wept. One of the Chechens said, ‘If you don’t go now, you don’t go at all. You stay here with your children … and we will shoot all of you.’ ’’

She couldn’t save both of them. She could only die with both of them — or save one of them, and herself. — (Los Angeles Times)