Putin puts bounty on the heads of Chechen rebels

Russia's Federal Security Service yesterday offered a reward of 300 million rubles (US$10.3 million) for information that could help "neutralize" two Chechen rebel leaders, and a military official reasserted Russia's right to combat terrorism the world over.

"As for carrying out preventive strikes against terrorist bases, we will take all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world," Colonel General Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of the Russian General Staff, told reporters.

Television footage yesterday of Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov briefing President Vladimir Putin on the investigation into the taking of more than 1,200 hostages in a school in southern Russia last week. His was the first official acknowledgment that the number of hostages had been so high; the government inmitially said about 350 people had been seized. A regional official later said the number had been 1,181.

The Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet KGB, said rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov had been responsible for "inhuman terrorist acts on the territory of the Russian Federation." Russian officials have accused the two of masterminding last week's attack in the small city of Beslan in North Ossetia, a region bordering Chechnya.

While Russia has offered rewards before for information on the rebels' whereabouts, the reward offered yesterday was by far the biggest yet.

Ustinov 326 hostages were killed and 727 wounded in the attack, which ended Friday in a wave of explosions and gunfire. He said 210 bodies had been identified, and forensic workers were trying to identify 32 body fragments. The death toll could rise, Ustinov said.

His deputy, Sergei Fridinsky, said 100 bodies had yet to be identified, the Interfax news agency reported. He also said that the bodies of 12 attackers had been identified, and that some had taken part in a June attack in the neighboring Russian republic of Ingushetia, which targeted police and killed 88 people.

Various had previously leaked some details of the investigation, but yesterday's TV broadcast of Ustinov's briefing was the first attempt by the government to give a formal account of the tragedy. The prosecutor said his information was based on interviews with witnesses and the one alleged attacker being held.

Ustinov the approximately 30 attackers, including two women, had met in a forest early Sept. 1 before heading to School No. 1 in Beslan in a military-type truck and two jeeps packed with weapons and ammunition.

Meanwhile, Moscow police on Tuesday reported the arrest of two people who allegedly helped two Chechen women suspected of blowing up two Russian airliners last month, killing 90 people, Interfax reported.

Police not disclose their names, but ITAR-TASS said one of the suspects, identified as Armen Arutyunov from the southern Russian region of Krasnodar, was reportedly arrested on Monday at Moscow's Domodedovo airport.

He allegedly identified the two women suspects based on identikit pictures and acknowledged selling them two seats on board the planes.