MOSCOW – Russia announced yesterday that it had paid out $10 million for information that led to the killing of the Chechen separatist leader, Aslan Maskhadov, and promised to do the same for informants who help track down another top rebel warlord, Shamil Basayev.

Russia’s successor to the KGB, the Federal Security Service (FSB), said Maskhadov’s killing had come following a tip-off in response to a bounty on the leaders of the Chechen separatist movement announced in September.

“This helped us establish the precise location of the international terrorist and band leader of the Chechen republic Aslan Maskhadov and conduct a special operation,” an FSB spokesman said. The informants “have received the money, but their identity will not be officially announced.”

Maskhadov, a 53-year-old former Chechen president, was killed by Russian forces on March 8 in a small village north of the Chechen capital, Grozny.

His killing has left Mr. Basayev, a convert to extremist Islam, as Chechnya’s most prominent rebel warlord, despite the appointment of a little-known Islamic judge as rebel leader. Mr. Basayev has claimed responsibility for a series of terrorist attacks – including the Beslan school massacre, the Moscow theater siege, and numerous suicide bombings – that combined have killed more than 1,000 Russians in recent years. Maskhadov denied any involvement in terrorist attacks.

The FSB said yesterday that it would relocate those who had received the bounty on Maskhadov to another part of Russia or to a Muslim country. It offered to do the same for informants on Mr. Basayev.

“The (FSB) confirms its preparedness to guarantee personal security and payment of an appropriate monetary award to citizens providing trustworthy information on the where abouts of terrorist leaders,” the FSB said in a statement.

The president of Chechnya’s Moscow-backed government, Alu Alkhanov, said rebel leaders were running scared and that he expected Mr. Basayev to be captured soon.

“I am confident that now Basayev will hardly be able to feel safe wherever he is hiding – in any region, settlement, forest, or in the mountains,” Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted him as saying. “Even people who hesitated before now have received strong confirmation of the irreversible nature of the process of bringing peace to the Chechen republic.”

A group of human rights activists yesterday decried the government’s decision to refuse to hand over Maskhadov’s body to relatives for burial. Russian law mandates that terrorists be buried in unmarked graves.

“We think the refusal to hand back the dead man’s body to his relatives for burial is shameful,” the activists said in a statement.

They also charged that Russian forces should have taken Maskhadov alive in order to prove the Kremlin’s allegations that he was a terrorist.

“His death was not the result of an accidental clash but, as the government has confirmed, the result of a well-prepared FSB operation. There is no doubt that the technical capabilities of the special forces would have allowed them to take him alive – and he could have had a fair trial.”

The operation that led to Maskhadov’s death is shrouded in mystery. Russian forces allege that he was killed when they blew up the entrance to a bunker where he had been hiding for weeks in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt. But yesterday, Russia’s popular Moskovsky Komsomolets daily newspaper reported that one of its reporters had visited the bunker and said Maskhadov could not possibly have lived there.

“MK’s correspondent, who inspected every corner of the house with the owner’s wife, could not find any trace of ventilation inside the bunker,” the paper reported. “Maskhadov would have suffocated there in 10 minutes.” The daily speculated that Maskhadov was killed in another location before his body was brought to Tolstoy-Yurt. On Monday, authorities announced they had blown up the house because they feared the building could have been booby trapped.

Maskhadov’s death was seen as a major victory by the Kremlin in its campaign against separatists in Chechnya. But many observers, including some European countries, have denounced the killing, describing Maskhadov as a moderate who could have promoted peace talks among the rebels. In the months before his death, Maskhadov had stepped up efforts to promote negotiations, declaring a month long cease-fire and calling for face-to-face talks with President Putin. Mr. Putin has repeatedly refused to negotiate with Chechen rebels, who he accuses of links to international terrorists. Tens of thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes during the two wars that have ravaged Chechnya since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Kremlin claims it has the mountainous province under control, but Russian soldiers die almost daily in rebel attacks.