Russia's security service chief said on Friday 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 Nikolai Patrushev said Russia needed new ways of preventing terrorism. Prosecutor General 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," 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 after last month's Beslan school siege, in which more than 330 hostages died.
However, some of the attackers had been "rendered harmless," Patrushev added. He gave no indication how the FSB gathered the information on the potential attackers.
Suicide bombers have killed scores of people in Russia in recent years.