russia going for preemptive strikes

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Russia threatens global anti-terror operations

Associated Press

POSTED AT 5:35 AM EDT Wednesday, Sep 8, 2004


Moscow — Russia has reportedly offered more than $10-million (U.S.) for information that helps “neutralize” two Chechen rebel leaders and threatened to attack terrorist facilities anywhere in the world.

The reports of the reward came a day after Russians got a glimpse of the drama from video footage filmed by the militants who captured the school in southern Russia. Tens of thousands of people turned out at a government-backed rally in Moscow Tuesday to condemn the violence and demand justice.

On Wednesday, Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov briefed President Vladimir Putin on the investigation into the taking of more than 1,200 hostages. It was the first official admission that the number of hostages had been so high. The government had initially said that about 350 people had been seized, and over the weekend a regional official said the number had been 1,181.

The Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet KGB, said two rebel leaders — Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov — had been responsible for “inhuman terrorist acts on the territory of the Russian Federation,” the Interfax and ITAR-Tass news agencies reported.

The school hostage standoff ended after three days with at least 326 people dead.

Mr. Maskhadov, the former president of Chechnya, had denied any involvement in the school standoff, according to aides. There has been no word from Mr. Basayev, a longtime rebel warlord who had claimed involvement in bloody raids and hostage takings in the past.

Mr. Ustinov said that forensic workers were still trying to identify some body fragments and he warned that the death toll could rise.

The video images aired on a Russian television station Tuesday night showed the heavily armed, hooded assailants amid the crowd of women, children and men in the school in Beslan.

Hundreds of hostages were shown seated in the school's cramped gym. Many of them had their hands behind their heads. A thick streak of blood stained the wood floor.

Football-sized bundles of explosives were attached to wires and strings hanging from a basketball hoop. One attacker in camouflage and a black hood stood amid the hostages with a boot on what NTV said was a book rigged with a detonator.

The NTV station said the pictures — which showed hundreds of people crowded into the gym beneath a string of explosives dangling from a basketball hoop — were recorded by the assailants.

At a muddy cemetery in Beslan where gravediggers have opened up two new tracts in the past three days, relatives opened the tiny coffin of 8-year-old Vasily Reshetnyak, touched his forehead and kissed him goodbye. A favorite toy — a red car — was placed alongside his body.

Liberal Russian politicians and newspapers have criticized authorities' handling of the crisis, which some say further exposed the ineffectiveness of the Kremlin's hard-line policies in Chechnya.

The Foreign Ministry said Russia would take new steps seeking the extradition of people it says are linked with terrorism, including Chechen rebel representatives Akhmed Zakayev and Ilyas Akhmadov.