Shamil Basayev, the ruthless Chechen rebel leader
responsible for terror attacks that led to the deaths of more than 800 people,
was killed Monday when a dynamite-laden truck in his convoy exploded in this
village of red brick houses next to a muddy field.
Chechen warlord Shamil
Basayev speaks in Grozny, in this Wednesday, October 28, 1999, photo.
Russian agencies reported Monday July 10 2006 that Basayev has been
killed. FSB head Nikolai Patrushev told President Vladimir Putin that
Basayev had been killed overnight in Ingushetia, the ITAR-Tass news agency
reported. [AP] |
The blast that killed Russia's most-wanted man, who had a US$10 million
bounty on his head, appeared to have been an accident. Basayev died along with
three other militants in this village in Ingushetia, a republic plagued by
sporadic spillover violence from neighboring Chechnya, where Russian forces have
battled separatists for a dozen years.
Basayev, 41, was emblematic of the radicalization of the Chechen rebel
movement, which began as a secular fight for independence, and its increasing
domination by Islamic extremists. His death, while a huge victory for Russian
President Vladimir Putin's fight against terrorism, will probably not end an
insurgency that has spread to communities across Russia's predominantly Muslim
south.
"I am sure that the explosions will stop, but the Caucasus is far from
peace," said Susanna Dudiyeva, whose 13-year-old son was one of 331 victims
killed in the 2004 Beslan school siege, which Basayev orchestrated.
Russian television showed charred remains of the truck that exploded and two
damaged cars next to a wrecked building. A corpse, apparently that of a rebel,
lay on the ground with the clothes in shreds. The village is two miles east of
Nazran, Ingushetia's biggest city.
Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev said Basayev's body had been
identified "through some of the fragments, including his head," the Interfax
news agency reported.
Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev told Putin in a televised
meeting that Basayev and many other rebels lost their lives in a special
operation overnight in Ingushetia. He said the rebels were planning a terror
attack to "put political pressure on the Russian leadership" during the Group of
Eight summit in St. Petersburg this week.
Patrushev said the operation to eliminate Basayev was "thanks to the
(Russian) intelligence position abroad," though he did not elaborate.
RIA-Novosti quoted an unidentified high-ranking security official in southern
Russia as saying that Russian intelligence had been tipped off about Basayev's
whereabouts from his close entourage.
"This is deserved retribution for our children in Beslan, for Budyonnovsk,
for all the terrorist attacks that they committed in Moscow and in other regions
of the Russian Federation including Ingushetia and the Chechen Republic," Putin
said, adding that everyone who took part in the operation should get state
medals.
However, Ingush authorities said the explosion occurred mistakenly during a
special police operation against rebels who were preparing a terror attack for
later Monday.
An Ingush regional Interior Ministry official said that Basayev was
killed while accompanying a truck filled with 220 pounds of dynamite that blew
up in Ekazhevo early Monday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to talk to the press, said Basayev was among four
militants killed.
