Russian forces foiled 'another Beslan'

Heavily-armed special forces accompanied by bomb disposal experts and sniffer dogs searched the ruins of a two-storey house near the capital of Dagestan, Makhachkala, where five militants were holed up for 15 hours Saturday, NTV television reported.

The head of the FSB security service in Dagestan, Nikolai Gryaznov, said the siege and a separate assault on rebels hiding in a house in Kaspiysk on the Caspian Sea -- in which a total of four Russian troops died -- had averted a major terror act.