RUSSIA: Russia's security service chief said yesterday that more than 80 suicide attackers had been trained abroad to attack the country, which, he said, had no adequate system of dealing with terrorism.
FSB security service head Mr Nikolai Patrushev said Russia needed new ways of preventing terrorism. Prosecutor general Mr Vladimir Ustinov suggested that taking hostages among relatives of those carrying out attacks might help to stop them.
"We have established there are more than 80 suicide attackers trained abroad who are to be sent to Russia to carry out terrorist acts," Mr Patrushev told the State Duma lower house of parliament.
"We don't know what route they might take to get into Russia, and this creates definite problems," he said during a session to debate security following last month's Beslan school siege in which more than 330 hostages died.
Mr Patrushev added that some of the attackers had been "rendered harmless".
Suicide bombers have killed scores of people in Russia in recent years. In August, explosions on two passenger planes killed more than 90 people, and another suicide bomber killed nine people outside a metro station in Moscow a few days later.