the school. The Torshin Report (December 2006) determined that 34 militants were involved, of whom 32 entered the school and 31 died there, and said that two accomplices remain at large (one of whom is Yunus Matsiyev, a bodyguard of Basayev). According to Basayev, "Thirty-three mujahideen took part in Nord-West. Two of them were women. We prepared four [women] but I sent two of them to Moscow on August 24. They then boarded the two airplanes that blew up. In the group there were 12 Chechen men, two Chechen women, nine Ingush, three Russians, two Arabs, two Ossetians, one Tartar, one Kabardinian and one Gurans. The Gurans are a people who live near Lake Baikal who are practically russified." Basayev further said an FSB agent (Khodov) had been sent undercover to the terrorists to persuade them to carry out an attack on a target in North Ossetia's capital, Vladikavkaz, and that the group was allowed to enter the region with ease because the FSB planned to capture them at their destination in Vladikavkaz. He also claimed that an unnamed hostage-taker had survived the siege and managed to escape. Identities On 6 September 2004, the names and identities of seven of the assailants became known, after forensic work over the weekend and interviews with surviving hostages and a captured assailant. The forensic tests also established that 21 of the hostage-takers took heroin, methamphetamine as well as morphine in a normally lethal amount; the investigation cited the use of drugs as a reason for the militants' ability to continue fighting despite being badly wounded and presumably in great pain. In November 2004, Russian officials announced that 27 of the 32 hostage-takers had been identified. However, in September 2005, the lead prosecutor against Nur-Pashi Kulayev stated that only 22 of the 32 bodies of the captors had been identified, leading to further confusion over which identities have been confirmed. Most of the suspects, aged 20–35, were identified as Ingush or residents of Ingushetia (some of them Chechen refugees). At least five of the suspected hostage-takers were declared dead by Russian authorities before the seizure, while eight were known to have been previously arrested and then released, in some cases shortly before the Beslan attack. Male The male hostage-takers were tentatively identified by the Russian government as: Ruslan Tagirovich Khuchbarov (32), nicknamed "Polkovnik" (Russian for "Colonel") – An ethnic Ingush and native of Galashki,