Russia will never give in to terrorism, says Putin

AS Moscow reeled from twin suicide bombings that killed 15 people at a weekend rock concert, President Vladimir Putin vowed that Russia would never give in to terrorism.

He also said that the Chechen rebels blamed for the attack are supported by international terrorist groups.

No-one has claimed responsibility for the blasts, but a passport found at the scene reportedly shows that at least one of the two female bombers was a Chechen.

"Today we can say that the bandits active in Chechnya are not simply connected with international terrorist organisations, they have become an integral - maybe the most dangerous - part of the international web," Putin told his cabinet.

"No country bows to the dictates of terrorists and Russia will not do so either. We must pluck them out from the basements and caves where they are hiding and destroy them."

The statement echoed the harsh language Putin used in 1999, shortly before Russian forces swept back into Chechnya at the start of the second war in the republic in a decade.

The Chechen conflict has deteriorated into a bloody stalemate, in which Russian forces pound rebel positions with artillery and air strikes, while rebels kill Russians in near-daily hit-and-run attacks.

The bombing of the rock festival was a grim reminder of how vulnerable the Russian capital is to terrorism.

It brought back painful memories of last October's raid on a Moscow theatre by scores of Chechen rebels, in which 129 hostages died mostly from the narcotic gas that special forces pumped in to end the siege.