Moscow ? 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.

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

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.