MOSCOW, Sept. 3 (Xinhuanet) -- Over 310 people, mostly children, were reportedly wounded Friday when Russian special forces stormedthe school in southern Russia to end the three-day long hostage crisis.

    The Interfax news agency said dozens of people were killed in the storming.

    The Itar-Tass news agency quoted regional health ministry sources as saying that the wounded children and parents were takento nearby hospitals.

    A Children's hospital head in regional capital said earlier that 69 wounded child hostages had been admitted, five in grave conditions.

    Earlier, Russian troops stormed the school in a chaotic battle to free hundreds of parents, teachers and children who had been held hostage since Wednesday by Chechen separatists.

    Naked and screaming children ran for safety amid machine-gun fire and explosions while attack helicopters clattered overhead. Rebels fled with soldiers in pursuit.

    Witnesses at the scene in Beslan, in the North Ossetia region near Chechnya, said about 10 bodies were taken out of the school on stretchers. At least seven people had been dead on arrival at hospital.

    Half- or fully naked children gulped from bottles of water after two days without drink in a stiflingly hot and crowded school. Some lay on stretchers.

    There was no definite toll yet. Tass quoted an unidentified official as saying most of the hostages were alive.

    "Those children who remained in the school, in general, were not hurt. The ones who suffered were the children in the group which ran from the school and on whom the fighters opened fire," the official said.

    The clashes appeared to have begun shortly after authorities said they had sent a vehicle to the school to fetch bodies. Various reports said this had been followed by a break-out attemptby either hostages or rebels.

    Officials had said some 500 people were being held in the school, but released hostages said the number could be nearer to 1,500 people lying on top of one another in increasingly desperate conditions.

    Russian troops had blown a hole in a wall to let hostages escape in the operate to free them. Witnesses saw three armored personnel carriers with heavily armed soldiers on board approaching the school. Later, soldiers were seen battling gunmen who had fled to a house in the south of the town.

    At least 200 children managed to flee the school when special forces commandos stormed it.

    Gunfire and huge explosions continued even after the special forces took control of the school.

    Five hostage-takers were killed on the spot when the special forces began the operation. The forces were reportedly pursuing two other female kidnappers, dressed in white, who managed to fleethe sieged school towards the south of the town.

    Interfax cited police as saying that the hostage-takers, believed to number about 40, had separated into three groups amid storming and tried to break out through crowds of frantic relatives waiting near the school as Russian special forces moved in.

    The siege is the latest in a wave of violent attacks in Russia,all linked to Chechen separatists. It came after Russia suffered aseries of terrorist attacks over the past week.

    An explosion near a metro station Tuesday in northeast Moscow killed 10 people and injured 37 others. The explosion came after Sunday's presidential election in Chechen republic, in which Kremlin-backed Alu Alkhanov won a landslide victory.

    Just five days before the election, two Russian passenger planes crashed almost simultaneously, killing all the 90 people aboard.

    A group called the "Islambouli Brigades" have claimed responsibility for the twin crashes and connected the crashes to the situation in Chechnya. Enditem