EXCLUSIVE
I said I was a muslim woman and begged killer for our lives. He pointed at girl terrorist and snarled that is a Muslim woman!

I begged killer for our lives

A DESPERATE Beslan mum pleaded in the name of Islam for her children's lives—after the heartless terrorists forced her to choose between saving her baby daughter or her seven-year-old son.

Angusished Salimat Suleimanova bared her soul and told the Russian rebels she too was a Muslim. But they were unmoved.

One snarled back: "No! You are not a Muslim woman. THAT is a Muslim woman!' At that he pointed to two veiled ‘black widow' gang members.

Last Sunday we told how hostage Salimat, 30, was put through a mother's ultimate torment. The terrorists offered her the chance to be released with five-month-old Amina as long as she left behind her litt;e boy Shamil (all pictured above).

The awful alternative was they could all stay together and face death inside the doomed hellhole.

With a guilt-racked heart, Salimat reluctantly chose to carry her baby to freedom. In the chaos and carnage that followed the explosive end to the three-day siege, Salimat's husband Igor, 38, went into the school searching for his son.

He found Shamil's charred, mangled body in the gym.

Guilty

A week later tormented mum Salimat sobbed as she told us:"I feel so bad for what I have done, very bad.

"I feel so guilty I cannot even look at my daughter who came out alive with me. I just know if I'd been inside the school I could somehow have saved Shamil's life." Then she described the tense moments that led to her fateful choice.

"The rebels decided to release some women with babies on the second day," she recalled.

"The babies were crying so much it annoyed them. I was ordered to stand up with some other mums.

"I was crying, pleading for Shamil to come too, but the terrorists got angry and one shouted, ‘I said no! Go away now or you all stay here!'"

That was when Salimat told her captors she shared their Muslim faith. But they weren't interested.

She told us: "I knew I had to get baby Amina out. So I looked at Shamil and said, ‘Be quiet, sit still and wait for me to come back.'

"He looked at me with such a gaze. He'd cried a lot until then—he was a scared little boy and all this had happened on his first day at school.

"But he was strangely quiet as I left, with such a sad look on his face. I'll never forget that moment.

Bullets

"I thought my husband Igor and the police would be at the school gate. I hoped I could hand Amina to them and run back to Shamil."

But the rebels were shooting and there was no way back. Little Shamil was left to fend for himself inside while his mum and sister were rushed to hospital.

At the start of the siege, Igor tried to offer himself to the terrorists in exchange for his family.

He failed to get in but bravely dodged bullets to free children locked in a boiler room.

When the stand-off reached its explosive climax he sprang into action again.

"As the kids ran out through the shooting I helped them to safety, looking for my Shamil," he told us.

"At the first moment possible I went inside and saw all those children, many dead and some alive in the gym.

"Then I spotted Shamil. I recognised him immediately though he was horribly burned. My poor son had suffered so much...and we weren't there to help him."

With tears falling down his face, Igor added: "I can't blame Salimat. It was an impossible choice."

But his poor wife is inconsolable.

"I feel so terrible for leaving Shamil there," she said.

"What kind of a mother am I?"