Beslan, Russia ? Funeral processions filled the rainy streets of this southern Russian city Monday, carrying coffins large and small, as townspeople buried scores of victims of a carefully planned school siege that prosecutors linked to a Chechen rebel leader seeking to ignite war.

Desperate families searched for those still missing from the siege at School No. 1, while others buried 120 victims during the first of two days of national mourning across Russia, which has seen more than 400 people killed in violence linked to terrorism in the past two weeks.

Reports emerged that the attackers apparently planned the school seizure months ago, sneaking weapons into the building in advance. There also were signs that some of the militants did not know they were to take children hostage and may have been killed by their comrades when they objected.

State television also sharply criticized government officials for understating the scope of the crisis, in which hundreds of hostages were held for 62 hours by heavily armed militants who reportedly demanded the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya.

On Monday, wailing women stroked the coffins or kissed wooden stakes that bore the names of victims until tombstones could be put in place in Beslan’s cemetery. Passing trains sounded their horns in respect. A fuzzy, pink rabbit adorned one of the caskets.

Among the first buried were Zinaida Kudziyeva, 42, and her 10-year-old daughter, Madina Tomayeva. Relatives said they tried to flee when the first explosions went off and were caught in firing between militants and Russian forces.

“They couldn’t run away. They didn’t have time,” said Irakly Khosulev, a relative from nearby Vladikavkaz. “Someone should answer for this.”

A prosecutor said the militants belonged to a group led by radical Chechen rebel Shamil Basayev. A man identified by authorities as a detained hostage-taker said on state TV that he was told that Basayev and separatist former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov were behind the attack.

“We gathered in the forest and the Colonel — it’s his nickname — and they said we must seize the school in Beslan,” said the man, who had short, dark hair and no beard. He said the orders came from Basayev and another Chechen commander, Aslan Maskhadov, and that his group included Arabs and Uzbeks as well as Chechens and other nationalities. “When we asked the Colonel why we must do it, he said, ‘Because we need to start war in the entire territory of the North Caucasus.'”

A girl holds a poster that reads Only

Mikhail Lapotnikov, a senior investigator in the North Caucasus prosecutors’ office, said on Channel One television that investigators have established the assailants were “the core of Basayev’s band” and had taken part in a June attack — also blamed on Basayev — targeting police and security officials in neighboring Ingushetia.

Criticism of the government response to the tragedy was mounting, with state television chiding officials for understating the magnitude of the crisis, for their slowness to admit that previous recent attacks were by terrorists and for their apparent paralysis.

“At such moments, society needs the truth,” Rossiya television commentator Sergei Brilyov said Sunday night.

Also, in apparent retaliation for the attack on the school, Russian authorities rounded up relatives of Basayev and Maskhadov in Chechnya on the second day of the siege. “I think it was to be hostages for hostages,” Akhmed Zakayev, a Maskhadov lieutenant, said in an interview. Twenty of Maskhadov’s relatives were detained and later released, Zakayev said.

Col. Ilya Shabalkin, a military spokesman, said the family members were held at the main base in Chechnya for their own protection. “We hid them in Khankala for two days to avoid vengeance actions against them,” he said.

The mother of Zaur Gutnov, 11, who was killed in the school seizure, weeps over his portrait during his funeral in Beslan, Russia. More than 100 burials were scheduled in the town cemetery and adjoining fields Monday.