Russian President Vladimir Putin has issued a warning to rebel insurgents telling them they could expect "no mercy" a day after pro-Chechen militants launched an attack on police and government buildings in the Caucasus city of Nalchik.
Speaking after ministers gave him an official report yesterday's raid, Putin said security forces had acted "coherently, effectively, toughly".
"Our actions must be commensurate with all the threats that bandits pose for our country. We will act as toughly and consistently as we did on this occasion," Itar-Tass news agency quoted him as saying.
Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said 72 fighters had been killed and 31 detained. The raiding party numbered about 100, Russian officials have said.
Mr Putin's comments came as Russian security forces said they had all but wiped out the remnants of the rebels who launched coordinated attacks on police, state security and other strategic buildings.
Up to 1,500 Russian troops and 500 special forces soldiers were sent to the city which is the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria province.
In what was believed to be the last rebel resistance, a small group of fighters surrounded in a prison administration building, had been wiped out by security forces by this afternoon.
"We have found so far 9 bodies of rebels but we may find some more elsewhere in the building," a colonel, who did not wish to be named, told journalists.
Police said they were now focussing on hunting down any gunmen who may have ditched their arms and tried to sneak out of the city, set in the foothills of the towering Mount Elbrus, by melting into the local population.
He said 24 police officers and 12 civilians in the town had also been killed. The rebels themselves contradicted these figures through their Web sites, putting their dead at 11 with four fighters missing.
The authorities' rapid response to the crisis was in contrast to last year's deadly attack by Chechen militants on a school in the town of Beslan, when the Russian leader was widely criticised for staying silent for too long.
Nalchik is about 100km north-west of Beslan, where Chechen rebels took hundreds of hostages at a school in 2004, in an attack claimed by warlord Shamil Basayev.