STAVROPOL – Residents of this southern region reacted with anger and bewilderment after a bloody ending to the hijacking of a bus containing 41 people.

The 12-hour siege ended after troops from Moscow's Alfa anti-terrorist unit mounted a lightning attack on the bus at the Mineralnye Vody airport – with commandos setting off stun grenades and a sniper shooting the hijacker in the head as he looked out to investigate the noise.

Explosive experts later defused a bomb that was found on the body of the hijacker, eventually identified as Sultan-Said Idiyev, a Chechen.

But to the weary residents of the city of Stavropol, the region's capital, the terrorist action did not come totally unexpected.

"I wasn't even surprised when I heard about it because I'm so used to this sort of thing now," said Nikolai Mukhin, a pensioner. "I'd have shot these scum with my own hands. But they got shot anyway."

"In this region we're used to this kind of event," agreed Olga Yurchenko, a teacher. But, she added: "It's not the events themselves that are frightening but our reaction to them. We watch them like some kind of show, waiting to see how everything will end."

The hijacker had seized the bus soon after dawn Tuesday as it headed from Nevinnomyssky to Stavropol, and had it diverted to the airport at Mineralnye Vody. The gunman demanded weapons, a helicopter and the release of five Chechens held in Russian jails since taking part in an almost identical hijacking in 1994.

For some in Stavropol, there was more to the hostage drama than the suffering endured by the victims – there was an economic cost.

"I'm outraged because I know just what a negative impact such events have on the local economy of a resort region like Mineralniye Vody, which is the jewel of Russia," said Sergei Nikitin, deputy head of the Stavropol department of the Anti-Monopoly Ministry. "This was an economic act, not a political one."

He added: "I'm satisfied with the action taken by the law-enforcement agencies, secret services and the regional authorities. I'm satisfied with the outcome."

Leonid Krentsler, chairman of the regional German association, Wiedergeburt, also said the region would probably suffer from the hijacking: "It's a real shock," he said. "We were supposed to receive a delegation of deputies from the Bundestag [German parliament] this August to discuss investment in joint projects. But when they heard about what happened – and they heard even before I did – they called and said they wanted to postpone the visit to end of September or early October."

But, he said: "I don't have the right to judge anyone and don't want to look for the guilty. I'm just happy it was all over so quickly and that the hostages weren't hurt."

Others saw the root of the entire drama in the unfolding and bloody crisis that has gripped the North Caucasus since the bombings in Moscow in 1999 and the start of the second Chechen war.

"The federal authorities should do something to protect Stavropol from terrorist attacks," said Marina Lyashchenko, a lawyer. "You don't have to keep terrorists sentenced for crimes committed here in local prisons, and why hold trials here for the terrorists who organized explosions in Moscow or Volgodonsk?" she added, referring to the trial to be held in Stavropol of the men allegedly responsible for the wave of bombings that gripped Russia in 1999.

But others were more philosophical about the incident, seeing it as a symptom of a country now engaged in a guerrilla war.

Yelena Pankova, a journalist, said: "I don't want to accuse anyone. I think that if bandits really want to, they will always do something like this. Nothing will stop them. Not the police. Not the secret services.

"It can happen in Stavropol, Moscow or anywhere else. We just happened to be unlucky that it happened here."