Forecasters predicted the state could be hit as early as tomorrow. Florida was bracing itself last night for its second hurricane strike in a month as Hurricane Frances edged closer to the US coast. They were reportedly outside the schhol and one was claimed to have happened after the fighters fired on special forces outside.. She said the releases were not announced publicly to avoid a crush from media and anxious relatives.Earlier two large explosions were heard. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.Russian television showed camouflage-clad men carrying babies, one wrapped in a blanket and one without a shirt. Dzugayev called the release "the first success" and expressed hope for further progress in talks with the captors.Regional parliamentary spokeswoman Fatima Kabalova said that several elderly women and a group of children were released, but gave no numbers and did not indicate whether she was referring to the infants released.

Russia's Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov, said the country was in a state of war, but "the enemy is unseen and there is no front line".. Chechen fighters released 26 women and children this afternoon from the school in southern Russia where they are holding more than 350 hostages. His announcement sparked gasps from the crowd, which crushed toward him to find out who was freed.It was not immediately clear if those were counted among the 26 released hostages reported minutes later by the rescue-operation headquarters.An Associated Press Television News reporter saw two women and at least three children, the children in the soldiers' arms, and APTN footage showed five women and three children. Russian sources said the fighters had opened fire on an armoured troop carrier with a grenade launcher.The raid came a day after a Chechen female suicide bomber blew herself up outside a Moscow metro station, killing nine people, and just over a week after two airliners were blown out of the sky in southern Russia, killing 90 passengers and crew. Afterwards a Kremlin statement said: "He [Mr Bush] stressed that the United States is ready to extend support in any form to deal with this new barbaric terrorist act." Russia also called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.Fatima Khabolova, a spokeswoman for the regional parliament, said parents of the seized children had videotaped an appeal to Mr Putin to fulfil the terrorists' demands.A spokesman for the North Ossetia interior ministry said: "The main task is to free the children alive ­ and everybody located there, but the most important thing is the children." Witnesses near the school reported hearing sporadic gunfire well into the early afternoon.

They also shut the local airport.Russian television showed a grim-faced Mr Putin rushing back to Moscow from his holiday home by the Black Sea while the head of the Russian interior ministry went straight to Beslan.Russia said that America had offered whatever help was needed to deal with the crisis President George Bush spoke to Mr Putin by telephone. The attackers are thought to be Chechen but their demands were unclear. Officials said they had tossed a video tape from a window in which they demanded the release of "comrades in arms", captured in a series of attacks in neighbouring Ingushetia in June that killed more than 90 people.The authorities closed all roads into Northern Ossetia to prevent rebel reinforcements getting through. As darkness fell, with no end to the siege in sight, the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, was embroiled in the worst crisis of his presidency. Police put the total number of hostages at between 300 and 400 Pupils at the school are aged between seven and 17 The local hospital was caring for at least 11 wounded.