President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered special services to hunt down and "destroy" the killers of four Russian hostages in Iraq, slayings that shocked Russia and prompted an angry outcry against the U.S.-led coalition.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered Russia's secret services to locate and kill the murderers of four Russian embassy staff who were kidnapped in Iraq. [AFP]

The Kremlin did not specify whether Russia's top security agencies - the Foreign Intelligence Service and the Federal Security Service - or others would be take the lead in finding the al-Qaida-linked group that claimed it killed the four Russian Embassy workers.

But Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet KGB, said his agency would be involved.

"We must work so that not a single terrorist who has committed a crime would be deprived of responsibility and get a fair punishment," he said.

Russia, a consistent critic of the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq, has no military forces there. However, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov has stated that Russia has the right to launch pre-emptive strikes against terrorist targets.

Two Russian intelligence agents were convicted in Qatar of a 2004 car bombing that killed Chechen rebel leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. A Qatari court had said the killing was carried out with the backing of "Russian leadership" and coordinated between Moscow and the Russian Embassy in Qatar. The agents later were returned to Russia to serve their sentences.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Krivtsov declined to say whether any Russian special forces were in Iraq, but noted that there are "people responsible for security at the embassy" in Baghdad. Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent defense analyst, told The Associated Press that "we don't have real special forces in Iraq."

Alexander Golts, a defense analyst with the online magazine Yezhednevny Zhurnal, said: "I suspect the Russian authorities have a very murky understanding of who committed these crimes, if they had a better understanding, they would have tried to do something while the hostages were still alive."

The Foreign Ministry on Monday confirmed that the four Russians who were kidnapped in early June had been killed. They were embassy third secretary Fyodor Zaitsev and staffers Rinat Agliulin, Anatoly Smirnov and Oleg Fedoseyev.

The kidnappers had demanded the Kremlin pull its troops out of Chechnya, a predominantly Muslim region in southern Russia where separatists have been fighting for independence.

The speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament, Sergei Mironov, said last week that officials had been negotiating for the hostages' release, a possible indication they had identified the kidnappers or knew a reliable intermediary.

Unlike the attack on Yandarbiyev, which took place in a relatively open country, penetrating militant networks in chaotic Iraq could be a formidable task.

Felgenhauer said Putin's order could be more a statement to bolster his image at home than a serious operational decision. "It's a copycat of George Bush's statements after 9/11, that we will hunt them down," he said.

But Felgenhauer also noted the attack on Yandarbiyev, and "taking that into account, it's possible that someone will end up dead." He said the most likely strategy would be for the special forces to send in a special "hit squad" under diplomatic cover.

Putin also said Russia "will be grateful to all its friends for any information on the criminals," the Kremlin said.

A Russian special operation in Iraq could be a blow to the image of U.S. forces in Iraq and Iraqi security forces, but Felgenhauer speculated that the Americans wouldn't seriously object if Russian forces hunted down the killers.

"No one considers the guys with guns in Iraq as friends," he said.

Earlier Wednesday, the lower house of the Russian parliament decried the murders and criticized the poor security provided by "occupying" countries in Iraq.

It said the abduction and killings were possible because "of the deepening crisis in Iraq, while the occupying countries are losing control over the situation, and terror and violence are becoming the order of the day in that country."

Nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky blamed foreign forces in Iraq for the killings of the hostages.

"It is clear that it was not the Iraqi people who did it - they love us in Iraq, when one says the word 'Russia' everybody smiles. This happened because a group of adventure-lovers from all over the world gathered there," he said.