Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday fired the interior minister
of North Ossetia and head of the local security service, a week after the bloody
school hostage-taking in the Caucasus republic, the Kremlin press servicesaid.
Putin dismissed Interior Minister Kazbeck Dzantiev and the chief of the
regional branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB)Valery Andreyev, Itar-Tass
news agency reported.
Dzantiyev offered his resignation early this month but it was later rejected
by the Russian Interior Ministry.
North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov dismissed his government on
Thursday amid public accusations against the poor handling over the school siege
that left nearly 340 dead, half of them children, and over 700 others injured.
A group of armed militants seized a secondary school on September 1, holding
some 1,200 people as hostages.
The crisis ended on the third day as Russian troops launched an unplanned
raid on the building after the raiders began to shoot fleeing hostages.
Thirty-one hostage-takers, including the ringleader, were killed during
exchanges of fire. One raider, who was captured alive by Russian security
forces, is being interrogated.
Putin has ordered an internal investigation of the affair, which authorities
blamed on Chechen separatists.
