Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, the most-wanted man in Russia, who claimed responsibility for the Beslan school hostage massacre and was blamed for many other attacks, has been killed, Russian news agencies said on Monday, quoting the FSB security service.
Basayev was killed in an overnight operation by Russian special forces in the southern Russian province of Ingushetia, in the volatile North Caucasus bordering Chechnya, where Russia is engaged in its second war against Chechen rebels in the past 11 years, Interfax and RIA Novosti said.
FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev reportedly announced the news but an FSB spokesperson contacted by Agence France-Presse said he was in a meeting with President Vladimir Putin and declined to confirm the information.
The news agency quoted Patrushev as saying that Basayev was among a group of militants killed as they prepared to carry out an unspecified “terrorist act” in Ingushetia designed to compromise the Kremlin in the run-up to the Group of Eight summit later this week in St Petersburg.
The agency reports said Putin had congratulated “all members of the special services who planned and executed this operation”.
“This is a just punishment of the bandits for our children in Beslan in Budennovsk, for all the terrorist attacks that they carried out in Moscow and other regions of Russia, including Ingushetia and the republic of Chechnya,” Interfax quoted Putin as saying.
The Kremlin-backed President of Chechnya, Alu Alkhanov, said the slaying of Basayev was a decisive turning point in the battle of Russian forces against the Chechen rebels.
“I think today [Monday] can be considered the logical conclusion of the heavy struggle that the special services, the federal forces and law enforcement bodies have been waging against illegal armed groups” in Chechnya, Interfax quoted Alkhanov as saying.
No details on the special operation that resulted in Basayev’s death were immediately available.
Russian media earlier, however, reported that four suspected Chechen militants were killed while they were sitting in two separate passenger cars beside a truck laden with explosives that blew up during a special operation in Ingushetia.
The reports said one of the four militants was related to Doku Umarov, the new leader of the self-styled Chechen rebel “government”. — AFP