Radical Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev purportedly took responsibility today for a recent series of deadly terrorist attacks in Russia, but put the ultimate blame for the massacre of more than 330 people held hostage in a school on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Suicide attackers seized a packed school in Russia’s troubled Caucuses region today and threatened to kill 50 children for every gunman “destroyed".

Fifteen children have been allowed to leave a school at the centre of a hostage crisis in Russia, according to media reports.

Armed men wrapped in suicide-bomb belts seized a school in the Russian region of North Ossetia today and were holding hundreds of hostages, including some 200 children.