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Chechen warlord Basayev cliams responsibility for school siege
17/9/2004 20:11

Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, in a letter posted Friday on the net, claimed responsibility for the Beslan school hostage-taking in which more than 330 people were killed, the Interfax news agency reported.
In the letter posted on a rebel website, which have usually carried Basayev's previous claims of responsibility, the notorious warlord claimed to be responsible for a series of recent attacks in Russia, including the school siege in southern Russia two weeks ago, Interfax reported.
The announcement, whose authenticity could not be immediately verified, says 33 hostage-takers conducted the attacks, instead of the officially claimed number of 31.
Russian authorities have been blaming the school siege on Basayev, saying that the warlord directly led the operation.
"Basayev once again demonstrated his true face, the face of a terrorist and murderer who will stop at nothing, even mass death for school children," Interfax quoted Ilya Shabalkin, spokesman for the regional headquarters of the anti-terrorist operation, as saying.
Basayev's claim clearly confirms that international terrorist organizations were behind the hostage crisis, he stressed.
Basayev also claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a Moscow subway station on August 31 and for the downing of two airplanes in late August, which jointly killed some 100 people.
"Nobody other than us has anything to do with the explosions in the planes or outside the metro station," the letter reads, adding that each operation cost him US$4,000 and US$7,000 respectively, Interfax quoted the website as reporting.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said Friday that there is proof showing Chechen rebel operations are getting support from abroad, primarily al Qaeda.
Moscow is convinced that the latest terrorist attacks "are part of a chain of international terrorist operations," Interfax cited Yakovenko as saying.



 Xinhua