The news chief of the BBC was in hiding today and under 24-hour police guard after receiving a death threat from alleged Serbian guerrillas, it was reported today.

The British network received the threat from an unknown caller who also claimed responsibility for the fatal shooting of popular TV newswoman Jill Dando on Monday.

“We killed Jill Dando. We will kill Tony Hall next,” the caller said, according to the Daily Mirror.

Hall, 48, was moved from his home with his wife and two children and placed under police protection, the Guardian and Mirror reported.

The BBC confirmed the death threat but declined comment.

The Guardian said the caller claimed the shooting of Dando, one of Britain’s highest-paid TV personalities, was a revenge attack for last week’s NATO raid on Serbian broadcast studios in Belgrade.

Scotland Yard said the claim is “one of a number of lines of inquiry” being pursued.

Hall runs the BBC’s news and public-affairs operations and is considered a leading candidate to be the next head of the venerable broadcasting institution.