MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Boris Yeltsin, chairing a meeting of his Security Council Tuesday, blasted Islamic rebels in Dagestan as degenerates and murderers and told his generals to be quick and tough in expelling them. Russian forces, facing their toughest security challenge since the disastrous 1994-96 Chechnya war, have so far failed to repel an incursion of Islamic rebels into Dagestan or tackle their stronghold in the center of the province.

Yeltsin, angered at what he saw as failed efforts to deal with the crisis, decided to chair the Security Council meeting, which groups senior ministers and officials, rather than leave it to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

NTV television quoted Yeltsin as telling the meeting that the rebels should not be called Islamists as they ``fought against their own people and were degenerates and murderers.''

``The action in Dagestan must be adequate, quick and tough,'' Itar-Tass news agency quoted Yeltsin as saying.

Yeltsin, in an earlier meeting with Putin, blamed ''careless'' generals for allowing the rebels to carry out a devastating car bomb attack on a Russian military apartment block and to take over a whole district of Dagestan.

``Chechen or other bandit groups have to be kicked out of Dagestan,'' Yeltsin, clearly furious, thundered in televised comments, prompting a flurry of reports from security and military officials that they were dealing with the crisis.

Russia's FSB domestic security service said it had detained a man suspected of involvement in the blast in the town of Buinaksk in a southern region of Dagestan Saturday, which killed at least 64 people, including 25 children and 22 women.

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry, in charge of the military operation, said Interior Ministry troops had fought their way into the rebel-held village of Karamakhi in central Dagestan after an intensive artillery and warplane bombardment.

NTV quoted military officials as saying 24 Russian servicemen had been killed and 46 wounded since more than 1,000 Islamic militants invaded Dagestan Sunday from neighboring Chechnya and seized several border villages.

The Defense Ministry spokesman confirmed media reports that the troops in Karamakhi had been ordered to capture positions on the outskirts of the village before the end of the day.

Islamic rebels control mountains around the village, making forays into it very dangerous. The military have previously said they would wear the rebels down before attacking.

``How did we lose a whole district in Dagestan? Why are there more terrorist acts in military compounds than in other places?'' Yeltsin said in televised comments at his meeting with Putin.

``This can only be explained by the carelessness of the military,'' he said.

An FSB statement said security forces were hunting two more suspected bombers, described as adherents of a puritan Wahhabi branch of Islam, which Russian authorities accuse of plotting to establish Islamic rule in Dagestan.

The statement also said the FSB had identified the owner of a truck that was found loaded with explosives in Buinaksk Saturday.