MOSCOW, Sept. 4 (Xinhuanet) -- Over 1,000 people were taken hostage by armed militants during the three-day hostage-taking tragedy in a southern Russian school, a local official said on Saturday.

    Lev Dzugayev, head of the North Ossetian presidential information department, told the Itar-Tass news agency that the total number of hostages in the school exceeded 1,000.

    Militants earlier claimed that they had initially seized 1,200 people and 70 percent of them were children, according to AslanbekAslakhanov, an advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Dzugayev noted that 542 people, including 330 children, who were injured in the crisis, are in local hospitals.

    Russian special forces and security agencies suppressed the hostage-takers in a raid on Friday, freeing over 400 children and adults from the school.

    However, at least 322 people, including 155 children, lost their lives in the crisis and all the bodies are being identified.

    Russia's deputy prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said Saturday that 26 hostage-takers have been killed.

    Valery Andreyev, regional chief of the Federal Security Service,said earlier in the day that over 30 armed militants carried out the hostage-taking and that Russian troops captured three of them alive on Friday.

    He said a large amount of explosives and mines planted by hostage-takers in the school have been found, which "may suggest that the terrorists had prepared for the terrorist attack in advance," Interfax reported.

    Itar-Tass reported that the weight of the ammunition unused exceeds 50 kg.

    Putin on Saturday vowed to work harder to hunt down terrorists after the school tragedy and anyone sympathizing with terrorists would be seen as "accomplices of terrorism."

    Speaking during an unannounced visit to the town of Beslan where the hostage crisis took place, Putin pointed out that "one of the tasks pursued by the terrorists was to stoke ethnic hatred,blow up the whole of our North Caucasus." Enditem