BESLAN, Russia (AP) – Mothers of victims of the Beslan school seizure, their grief mixed with fury a year after Russia’s deadliest hostage-taking raid, said yesterday that the government had failed to learn from the tragedy and had left the country vulnerable to equally devastating terrorist attacks.

The Chechen warlord whoclaimed responsibility for the assault that ended with more than 330 people dead – apparently playing on suspicions of a state cover-up – alleged that Russian security services provided the attackers with a safe corridor through the region in a bungled plot to trap them.

“The government is supposed to guarantee our lives, take responsibility for our lives, and they haven’t, so we’re taking responsibility,” Susanna Dudiyeva, head of the Beslan Mothers’ Committee, said a day before the anniversary of the attack, which began when militants demanding Russian forces withdraw from nearby Chechnya seized a school in this North Ossetia region town last Sept. 1.

Dudiyeva, whose son was killed in the three-day school ordeal, told reporters that the government has failed to learn its lessons.

“If this isn’t corrected, there will be another terrorist attack like Beslan,” she said. “We are fighting for the truth.”

Many victims’ relatives have accused the government of mounting a cover-up, insisting that the militants had help from corrupt officials to allow them to cross heavily policed territory and seize the school. Critics have questioned how more than 30 heavily armed attackers could have made their way to the school without being detected by police.

The attack, which began on the first day of school, ended on Sept. 3 when Russian forces stormed the school after explosions were heard inside. More than half of the dead were children.

A delegation of Beslan mothers is to meet President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday, to address grievances, including their unhappiness with the official investigation.