National News

Russia offers bounty for Chechen rebels after more than 300 die in hostage crisis

MOSCOW (AP) - Russia threatened Sept. 8 to strike terrorists "in any region of the world," and offered a 10 million dollars(¥1.1 billion) reward for information leading to the killing or capture of Chechnya's top rebel leaders.

In a nationally televised meeting, Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov briefed Putin on the investigation into the taking of more than 1,200 hostages in a school in the town of Beslan.

Ustinov said 326 hostages were killed - around half of them children - and 727 wounded in the school attack, which ended Sept. 3 in a series of explosions and gunfire. Officials later said 336 were confirmed dead.

Russia's Federal Security Service offered its biggest bounty ever for information that could help "neutralize" Chechen rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov, whom officials have accused of masterminding the recent hostage crisis.

Ustinov said 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 truck and two jeeps filled with weapons and ammunition.

People who had gathered to mark the first day of school were taken into the gym by the militants, some of whom voiced objections to taking control of a school. The group's leader shot one of the militants and said he would do the same to any other militants or hostages who did not show "unconditional obedience."

Later that day, he detonated the explosives worn by two female attackers, killing them to enforce the lesson. One of the militants was stationed with his foot on a button that would set off the explosives; if he lifted his foot, the bombs strung up around the school gym would detonate.

On Sept. 3, the militants decided to change the arrangement of the explosives, and they appear to have set off one bomb by mistake. That caused panic as hostages tried to flee and the attackers opened fire.

Shukan ST: Sept. 17, 2004

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