President Vladimir Putin on Saturday vowed to work harder hunting down terrorists after the latest tragic hostage crisis that killed more than 300 people in southern Russia.

    Anyone sympathizing with terrorists would be seen as "accomplices of terrorism," Putin said during an unannounced visit to the town of Beslan, in the republic of North Ossetia early Saturday.

    "One of the tasks pursued by the terrorists was to stoke ethnic hatred, blow up the whole of our North Caucasus," Putin told local security officials.

    "Anyone who feels sympathetic towards such provocation will be viewed as accomplices of terrorists and terrorism," Putin said.

    In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry released a statement, pledging "a resolute, uncompromising fight against international terrorism, in the forefront of those who set as their top priority the defense of human rights and freedoms, the right to life."

    Russian security forces Friday stormed a school in Beslan where terrorists had held hundreds of pupils and their parents and teachers hostage since Wednesday. After a 10-hour fierce exchanges of gunfire, 26 militants were killed, but several others were reportedly still at large.

    Russia's Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky said Saturday 322 bodies, 155 of them children, have been recovered.

    "These are not the final figures, and they will probably grow, but not by too much," Fridinsky added.

    The Interfax new agency quoted an unnamed security official as saying that explosives and weapons used by the terrorists had been smuggled into the school in advance.

    The Itar-Tass news agency reported earlier that 704 people wereinjured during the hostage crisis, while Interfax said 531 remained in hospital by early Saturday morning.

    Taimuraz Revazov, the deputy health minister of the Russian republic of North Ossetia, confirmed that 283 children are still in hospital and 92 of them in critical condition.

    Aslanbek Aslakhanov, an advisor to Putin, said earlier that militants claimed that they had initially seized 1,200 people, 70 percent of them children.