Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking on Saturday after a hostage seizure by Chechen militants ended in huge bloodshed, called on Russia's security forces to act more effectively against terror.
Putin denounced gunmen who resorted to attacking "defenceless children" in a school in southern Russia where more than 320 people were killed. But he said Russians had a right to demand more from security forces in times of crisis.
"We are dealing with a direct intervention of international terror against Russia, with a total, cruel and all-powerful war which again and again takes the lives of our fellow countrymen," he said in a televised speech to the people.
"We must create a much more effective system of security. We must demand that our security forces act at a level appropriate to the level and scope of the new threats."
Dressed in a sombre suit and speaking alongside a Russian flag, Putin suggested that security forces which stormed the school seized by Chechen militants had to adopt new tactics to guard against large loss of life in future.
"It is vital to create an effective anti-crisis management system - including fundamentally new approaches in the activity of the security forces," he said.
The Kremlin leader, speaking after a week of calamities linked to Chechen separatists, pledged to bring under control the North Caucasus, which includes the turbulent region.
But Putin, who has repeatedly rejected any notion of talks with separatists, made no direct reference to the region in his 10-minute address.
DEATH TOLL INCLUDES 155 CHILDREN: At least 330 people, almost half of them children, died in the bloodbath that ended a school siege by Chechen separatists in southern Russia, a senior justice official said on Saturday.
With hospitals overflowing and many bewildered relatives still seeking news of missing loved ones after Friday's bloody denouement, President Vladimir Putin ordered a security crackdown in the Caucasus.
As he visited the hospital in the town of Beslan, the scene of the drama not far from Chechnya, he warned separatist sympathisers that they would be viewed as "accomplices of terrorism".
Giving figures that confirmed the episode as the grimmest hostage-taking of modern times, Deputy Prosecutor-General Sergei Fridinsky said: "As a result of the terrorist acts, 330 people were killed, 155 of whom were children. I think the death toll will rise, but probably not very much."
Putin said he had ordered Beslan and the surrounding region of Ossetia to be sealed off in the hunt for perpetrators.
"One of the tasks pursued by the terrorists was to stoke ethnic hatred, to blow up the whole of our North Caucasus," he told security officials.
"Anyone who feels sympathetic towards such provocations will be viewed as accomplices of terrorists and terrorism."
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