Beslan. Surviving children and parents have received psychological treatment at Vladikavkaz Rehabilitation Centre. One of the hostages, a physical education teacher called Yanis Kanidis (a Caucasus Greek, originally from Georgia) who was killed in the siege, saved the lives of many children. One of the new schools built in Beslan was subsequently named in his honour. The operation also became the bloodiest in the history of the Russian anti-terrorist special forces. Ten members of the special forces died (7 Vympel and 3 Alpha members). A commando called Vyacheslav Bocharov was believed to have been killed, but proved to be seriously wounded in the face but alive when he regained consciousness and managed to write down his name. The fatalities included all three commanders of the assault groups: Colonel Oleg Ilyin and Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Razumovsky of Vympel, and Major Alexander Perov of Alpha. At least 30 commandos suffered serious wounds. Identity of hostage-takers, motives, and responsibility Responsibility Initially, the identity and origin of the attackers was unclear. It was widely assumed from Day Two that they were separatists from nearby Chechnya, though President Putin's Chechen aide Aslambek Aslakhanov denied it, saying "they were not Chechens. When I started talking with them in Chechen, they had answered: 'We do not understand; speak Russian. Freed hostages said that the hostage-takers spoke Russian with accents typical of Caucasians. Though Putin had rarely hesitated to blame Chechen separatists for past acts of terrorism, he avoided linking the attack with the Second Chechen War. Instead, he blamed the crisis on the "direct intervention of international terrorism", ignoring the nationalist roots of the crisis. Russian government sources initially claimed that nine of the militants in Beslan were Arabs and one was a black African (called "a negro" by Andreyev), though only two Arabs were later identified. Independent analysts such as Moscow political commentator Andrei Piontkovsky said that Putin tried to minimise the number and scale of Chechen terrorist attacks rather than exaggerate them as he had done in the past. Putin appeared to connect the events to the U.S.-led War on Terror, but at the same time accused the West of indulging terrorists. On 17 September 2004, Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev, operating autonomously from the rest of the North Caucasian terrorist movement, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the Beslan school siege. The event was strikingly similar to the Chechen raid on Budyonnovsk in 1995