Unknown gunmen shot dead the top bodyguard of Chechnya’s pro-Russian administration chief Akhmad Kadyrov, interior ministry officials said on Wednesday.
Murat Radiyev was found dead in his car with gunshot wounds to the head late on Tuesday near Neftyanka, in the suburbs of Grozny, the officials told the Interfax news agency.
Bullet cases were found a short distance from the car. Around 30 of Kadyrov’s bodyguards have been killed previously, according to Interfax.
Kadyrov is currently visiting Saint Petersburg. Pro-Russian officials in Chechnya are regarded as collaborators by separatist rebels, and dozens have been killed since Russia launched a counter-insurgency campaign in the republic in October 1999.
Meanwhile, Russian commanders launched an air-backed artillery campaign against rebels holed up in the village of Gansolchu near Nozhai-Yurt, 60 kilometres (35 miles) east of Grozny as the rebels attempted to break out of their encirclement, military officials said.
”Federal artillery shelled the rebel groups attempting to cross into the neighbouring Kurchaloi district,” the deputy commander of federal forces in the North Caucasus Colonel Boris Podoprigora told Interfax.
The sweep launched a week ago to round up a 60-strong rebel group was still in progress Wednesday, he said.
Two Russian servicemen were seized by rebels late on Tuesday at the village of Pobedinskoye near Grozny, the RIA Novosti news agency quoted military officials as saying, while ITAR-TASS, also quoting military sources, said two rebels had been killed in a skirmish with Russian interior ministry troops.
Two Russian soldiers were injured when mines were detonated at Dyshni-Vedeno, in the mountainous southeast of the republic, Interfax added.
Russia says it has lost around 4 500 troops in the Chechen conflict. Anti-war groups say the true toll may be three times as high. – Sapa-AFP