Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday fired the interior minister of North Ossetia and head of the local security service, a week after the bloody school hostage-taking in the Caucasus republic, the Kremlin press service said.  

Putin dismissed Interior Minister Kazbeck Dzantiev and the chief of the regional branch of the Federal Security Service (FSB) Valery Andreyev, Itar-Tass News Agency reported.

Dzantiyev offered his resignation early this month but it was later rejected by the Russian Interior Ministry.

North Ossetian President Alexander Dzasokhov dismissed his government on Thursday amid public accusations against the poor handling over the school siege that left nearly 340 dead, half of them children, and over 700 others injured.

A group of armed militants seized a secondary school on September 1, holding some 1,200 people as hostages.

The crisis ended on the third day as Russian troops launched an unplanned raid on the building after the raiders began to shoot fleeing hostages.

Thirty-one hostage-takers, including the ringleader, were killed during exchanges of fire. One raider, who was captured alive by Russian security forces, is being interrogated.

Putin has ordered an internal investigation of the affair, which authorities blamed on Chechen separatists.

(Xinhua News Agency September 12, 2004)