Moscow- Russian police were on Tuesday scanning public video recordings in their search for the killers of a high-profile lawyer and journalist, whose murders in public drew international attention.

Police officials confirmed that no suspects had been identified yet.

Attorney Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova were shot dead in public after a press conference on Monday afternoon, only a 10-minute walk from the Kremlin.

Markelov was killed immediately by an assailant armed with a silencer-fitted firearm on Prechistinkaya street, in downtown Moscow.

Baburova, freelance journalist for the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, was shot when she tried to pursue the suspect, according to reports. She died in hospital of a wound to the head a few hours later, doctors said.

Markelov had protested against the early release of a convicted murderer. He represented the family of a Chechen woman, Kheda Kungayeva, whose murder by a high-ranking Russian military officer in 2000 unleashed a fury of protest against human rights abuses in the region.

Markelov had told reporters he would lodge an international court appeal against the early release of Colonel Yuri Budanov from a
10-year prison term last week.

He had also acted for the family of slain Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who wrote extensively on Russian human rights violations in Chechnya.

The editor-and-chief of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov, said the paper had been able to recover a recording of Baburova's interview with Markelov that afternoon.

Muratov did not rule out the possibility that Baburova was also a target in the attack.

Budanov was the first Russian military officer to be prosecuted for killing a civilian during two wars the Kremlin fought in the early 1990s against separatist movements in Chechnya. He confessed to strangling Kungayeva in anger during an interrogation for her suspected role as a sniper. (dpa)