Under Siege School May Hold as Many as 1500 Hostages

Official number of hostages is underestimated by a factor of 4

Lenta.Ru sources in the EmerCom had said it yesterday. 1500 (or 1020) instead of 354 officially acknowledged.
The worst part of it is that this estimate makes perfect sense.
With 880 pupils attending the school in question, how on Earth could it happen, that only 132 kids were taken hostage, as the officials originaly suggested?
Should that mean, that only 1 out of 7 pupils did attend school on September 1st?
Were the authorities implying, that they were able to locate all of the 748 schoolchildren who failed to show up for studies?

In any case, the authorities were lying, as Ruslan Aushev has just confirmed, and it's highly improbable, that this sort of lie was meant to help the rescue efforts. Rather it was just one more coverup, which means the following math. Rescue operation is expected to produce some 350 live hostages, and no one would allow counting corpses of those left behind.

Great minds out there.
Yuck.