$10m bounty for siege chiefs

President Vladimir Putin today put a $10 million bounty on the heads of the Chechen terrorists accused of masterminding the bloody capture of Beslan school.

The Russian authorities have offered up to 300 million roubles for information on Chechen rebel leaders who organised the hostage-taking which led to 335 deaths.

They also announced they want to force the return of a Chechen spokesman who was granted refugee status in Britain.

Russia's federal security service has promised the cash for accurate information that could help "neutralise" Chechen rebel leaders Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov,

The reward was announced as the anger and disbelief of Russians over the massacre was intensified by TV broadcasts of footage shot inside the school by the terror gang, showing terrified children and parents.

Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov confirmed 326 hostages were killed and 727 were wounded in the attack, which ended on Friday in a wave of explosions and gunfire.

He said 210 bodies had been identified, and forensic workers were also trying to identify 32 body fragments. But he warned the death toll could yet rise. The Foreign Ministry said Russia would once again seek the extradition of people it says are linked with terrorism, including Chechen rebel representatives Akhmed Zakayev and Ilyas Akhmadov.

Zakayev, 44, an envoy for separatist leader and former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, has refugee status in Britain. Akhmadov is in the United States.

Last November a judge ruled there was a "substantial risk" Zakayev would be tortured if he returned to Russia to face trial.

The videotape showing the Beslan terrorists dangling bombs over the children they would later kill has inflamed an already tense stand-off between the region's Christians and Muslims.

The film showed hundreds of children cowering on the floor of the blood-smeared gymnasium, bombs suspended a few feet above them, as masked gunmen brandished machineguns in their terrified faces.

Many of the children and parents seen on camera were killed in the carnage of the siege's climax. And the minute-long videotape - handed to a local politician acting as an intermediary before the massacre - has further roused the intense anger among the Orthodox Christian community of Beslan.

Many here say the terrorists who slaughtered their children last Friday had the support of Muslims in the neighbouring province of Ingushetia, and there are fears of a repeat of 1992's Ingush-North Ossetia war.

"Stalin had the right idea, he deported all the Ingush," said Fatima, a Christian who lost her husband in last week's fire.

And in Chernem, a 20-minute drive away, 50-year-old Christian Mina said: "What kind of life can we have with the Ingush after this killing? It's as if they took one of our eyes and one of our arms."

The head of Russia's province of North Ossetia, where more than 300 people died in a school siege last week, on Wednesday promised angry opponents he would sack the regional government.

"I promise that in the next two days there will be an order dismissing all the government," President Alexander Dzasokhov told a rally of local residents protesting in the regional capital Vladikavkaz against the government's performance in the crisis.