'Suicide bombers preparing to attack Russia'

More than 80 foreign-trained suicide bombers are planning to attack Russia, a top security official told the country's parliament.

"We don't know what route they might take to get into Russia, and this creates definite problems," Director of the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopastnosti, General Nikolai Patrushev, told the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, on Friday.

He accused governments of West Asian Islamic countries of supporting suicide bombers in the North Caucasus, where Moscow has been fighting Chechen separatists for the past decade, RIA Novosti reported.

Besides bombing of two passenger jets and a suicide attack at Moscow metro station in August, Chechen rebels also carried out a suicidal mission to take large numbers of hostages during last month's seizure of a school in Beslan.

"In order to confidently say that there won't be any terrorist acts, a whole system of measures need to work well," Gen Patrushev said. "Such a system has not yet been created in our country."

At the Duma meeting, Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said his department had prevented a string of attacks in the past year.

"More than 200 terrorist acts have been prevented... Many of these crimes were aimed at killing hundreds of people and bringing about the gravest consequences," he said.