MOSCOW, Sept 8: Russia warned Wednesday it could launch preemptive strikes on terror bases anywhere in the world and put a bounty on two top Chechen rebels after the broadcast of a chilling video of the school hostage siege.
"We will take steps to liquidate terror bases in any region" in the world, Russian Chief of Staff General Yury Baluyevsky told reporters at a meeting with US General James Jones, NATO's supreme allied commander for Europe.
Baluyevsky noted that the doctrine of preventive military action against terror targets had been spelled out publicly before and said such steps were only an "extreme measure" that did not include use of nuclear force.
His remarks, nonetheless, reflected a hardening mood in Moscow a day after a television network aired video footage of scared children and parents sitting in the school gym in southern Beslan as masked militants rigged bombs over their heads.
The European Union sought to downplay the warning on preemptive action against terror targets, but British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw backed the comments, calling the reaction "understandable".
Russia's FSB intelligence and security agency announced a cash reward of 300 million rubles (10 million dollars) for information leading to the "neutralization" of two top Chechen rebels accused of planning the Beslan siege.
One of them, former Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, has denied involvement in the tragedy. There has been no public word from the other, warlord Shamil Basayev, since the three-day siege ended on Friday in the deaths of hundreds of children and adults.
The 87-second videotape was aired late Tuesday by the Russian television network NTV, which said the tape was shot by the hostage-takers themselves and later obtained from unnamed sources by its correspondent.
The tape shows bombs suspended from a wire strung the full length of the gym where 1,200 hostages were seated on the floor. There was no obvious panic among the captives, but several, including a young boy with his hands clasped above his head who sat at the feet of a gunman in camouflage, looked frightened as the militant pointed downward at an object under his foot that the commentator said was a mine.
Another segment showed a woman dressed in black head to toe, her face covered, and wearing a belt packed with explosives as she stood in a doorway near the gym brandishing a pistol.
The video provided a first-hand glimpse of the terrifying situation in which the captives were held for three days before the siege erupted in explosions and gunfire that left 336 of the hostage victims dead and more than 700 hurt.
But the top political official in Russia's southern republic of North Ossetia where Beslan is located announced his entire government would step amid heavy criticism for their handling of the hostage siege.
"In two days time a decree will be signed over the resignation of the government," president Alexander Dzasokhov told over 1,000 angry demonstrators outside the parliament building in the republic's capital, Vladikavkaz.
Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov met with Putin, offering for the first time the government's version of how events began and evolved during the three-day siege. Ustinov told Putin that the hostage seizure was led by a man that the militants referred to as "colonel" who killed a member of his commando on the first day of the drama who had questioned taking children as hostages.
He also used a remote control device to detonate explosives on belts worn by two female suicide bombers as a warning to other hostage-takers, Ustinov said. Portions of Ustinov's account to Putin were broadcast on Russian television, and the prosecutor said the militants had arrived at the school in three vehicles, including a truck, carrying "a large quantity" of weaponry.
Ustinov confirmed earlier reports that chaos erupted at the school when a bomb accidentally exploded as the militants were reconfiguring the explosives in the school. -AFP
