All terrorists from the Beslan school siege were drug addicts, as forensics expertise of their bodies has shown after the end of the three-day drama, Russian Deputy Chief Prosecutor Nikolay Shapel announced.

They were all used to taking drugs, and especially injecting the "hard" heroin and morphine, the prosecutor office's press release read. Some blood concentrations of drugs found during autopsy of terrorists' bodies far exceeded the usual deadly dose.

Investigative officials believed that at some time the terrorists finished their drugs and plunged into abstinence characterized by aggression and empty-minded behaviour.

Some 40 terrorists took hostage nearly 1,200 teachers, children and their parents on the first school day opening in Beslan's School Number 1, North Ossetia.

In the tragic outcome on the third day of siege, plagued by hunger, thirst and fear, some hostages managed to escape the exploding bombs and mines inside the school and the gunfire, but nearly 350, half of them children, died.