BESLAN, North Ossetia -- With the air thick with grief and anger, thousands of people gathered at Beslan's School No. 1 on Thursday to commemorate the 331 hostages, half of them children, who died in last year's attack.

Mourners passed through two metal detectors at the entrance to the schoolyard, and police officers searched them for weapons, a grim irony that angered some victims' families.

"My daughter and her two children were in this damn school," screamed Zoya Gadiyeva, who was holding portraits of her daughter and 6-year-old granddaughter, both of whom died.

"I want to know the truth. Where should we go to find out the truth? The police were unable to protect our children, but today they are even checking the bag of an old woman," she said.

Police closed adjacent streets to traffic and meticulously checked the documents of people in the vicinity of the school.

Inside the schoolyard, the bereaved, many carrying candles, flowers and stuffed animals, lined up to enter the burnt-out school gym, where more than 300 of the some 1,000 hostages died.

Bells tolled at 8:30 a.m., the time the school opened last year, and the haunting strains of Mozart's "Requiem" then filled the air.

In the gym, women wearing black were weeping and screaming, and a kneeling man cried out, "Why, why did they do this to us?"

One woman stroked a photograph of her teenage granddaughters, Alla and Inna Smirnova. "Here are my beautiful girls," she cried. "When you entered this school, you were so pretty!"

Flowers and lit candles covered the gym floor and windowsills, and portraits of the dead were hung on what remained of the walls. Pictures of the men, most of whom were shot on the first day of the attack, Sept. 1, were tacked to one wall, while the opposite wall was covered with pictures of smiling teenagers. Pictures of young children filled an entire corner of the gym. A clear Plexiglas roof stretched overhead.

Black marble slabs with water trickling down them stood at the sides of the gym door, symbolizing the tears shed by the victims' loved ones.

A wing of the school was plastered with red and white banners. Children from all over the world had signed the red banners, while the white banners carried the names of the Beslan children who had died. The banners were brought to Beslan by the Children as Peacemakers Association, which was founded by U.S. citizen Patricia Montadon, said Zhanna Tebeyeva, the association's Beslan coordinator.

Representatives from the Red Cross walked around the grounds, comforting the grief-stricken and handing out sedatives.

Gadiyeva said her 38-year-old son died of heart attack just five months after the attack because he could not handle the stress.

"Why didn't you do anything to protect them?" she berated the police.

"I will cry everyday until I reach you over there," she said, turning to the pictures of her daughter and granddaughter.

Nearby, an old woman in black sang a song in Ossetian. "You all died and still the authorities are hiding the truth from us," the woman sang, according to a translator. "Tell me, my dears, where should we go for the truth?"

A policeman told her to be quiet, and she retorted in Russian: "You haven't lost anyone. You should have protected my children, but you failed, and now you are trying to shut me up?"

A group of screaming women tried to stop the principal of School No. 1, Lidia Tsaliyeva, from entering the gym. One woman ran up and tried to hit her on the head, connecting only lightly before police carried her away.

Some men then approached her. "How dare she come here today," one man yelled.

"She is responsible for the death of our children. She betrayed us," screamed Batras Tsalago as she tried to get near Tsaliyeva.

Police officers quickly surrounded Tsaliyeva and escorted her away.

Tsalago, who lost his brother Timur, and many other residents believe that Tsaliyeva had somehow cooperated with the terrorists. She denies the accusations.

Across the country, people on Thursday came together to mourn the Beslan tragedy. All Russian Orthodox churches held memorial services, and Patriarch Alexy II led the service in Moscow's Donskoi Monastery, Interfax reported.

President Vladimir Putin, visiting Kuban State Agriculture University as it and other schools opened for the school year, asked for a moment of silence.

"The Sept. 1 celebration in our country is always associated with a celebratory atmosphere, but I think you can understand me," Putin said. "One year after the horrible tragedy in Beslan, millions of people ... remember it."

Dmitry Kozak, Putin's envoy to the Southern Federal District, was at School No. 1 in Beslan on Thursday, as was North Ossetia President Mamsurov Taimuraz. Both men mingled and spoke with mourners, who began leaving the school grounds at about 11 a.m.

Alyona Tskayeva -- the 6-month-old girl who stirred many hearts when she was photographed being carried out of the school by a police officer on the second day of the seizure -- was also at the school with her grandmother and grandfather. She is now 1 1/2 years old.

"She doesn't remember anything about the seizure. She hardly remembers her mother. Sometimes she takes her picture and says 'Fatima,'" said her grandmother, Klara Gasinova.

Alyona's mother, Fatima, and her 9-year-old sister, Kristina, died. The mother had stayed behind to be with her older daughter.

Annotazioni − Staff Writer Carl Schreck contributed to this report from Moscow.