Chechen guerrilla warlord Shamil Basayev has claimed responsibility for last week's attack on a town in Russia's Caucasus that killed dozens of police and civilians.
Russian authorities say they killed more than 70 militants linked to the Chechen independence cause when a small army of rebels attacked police and other strategic buildings in Nalchik, capital of Kabardino-Balkaria region, on October 13tj.
A total of 24 police officers and 12 civilians were also killed in the attack.
"The amir [leader] of the Kabardino-Balkaria sector of the Caucasus Front, Seyfullah, commanded the operation. I exercised general operational control," Basayev wrote in an e-mail published on a sympathetic website.
Basayev, who is Russia's most wanted man, is suspected of organising the Beslan school siege that killed 330 people, more than half of them children, in September 2004.