Rebel leader behind Beslan school massacre killed [video report]

Shamil Basayev said attacks on Russian civilians, including children, were justified. File picture / Reuters

MOSCOW - Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, who had claimed responsibility for the bloody 2004 Beslan school siege and was Russia's most wanted man, has been killed.

FSB security agency chief Nikolai Patrushev said Basayev had been about to mount an attack in southern Russia to mar the weekend G8 summit Russian President Vladimir Putin will chair in St Petersburg.

Putin, whose already huge popularity at home will be further boosted by the news as he prepares to meet US President George W Bush and other world leaders, said Basayev's death was "deserved retribution" for a campaign of killing.

More than 331 people, half of them children, were killed in the Beslan school siege in September 2004. Russian forces stormed the school, which had been seized by Islamist militants linked to Chechnya's fight for independence.

"This is deserved retribution against the bandits for our children in Beslan ... for all these acts of terror they committed in Moscow and other Russian regions," Putin said in televised comments.

Patrushev said Basayev, along with other Chechen fighters, was killed in an operation by special forces in Ingushetia, a region neighbouring Chechnya.

"They intended to use this terrorist act to put pressure on Russia's leadership at a time when the G8 summit was being held," said Patrushev.

Officials said Basayev was killed when his group's explosive-laden truck blew up. They said they found fragments of Basayev's prosthetic leg and his head, with its distinctive beard.

But it was not entirely clear what role Russian forces played in killing Basayev. A fellow rebel said the blast was an accident.

Russian state TV said Basayev's men were loading the truck with explosives in the village of Ekazhevo when it blew up.

It said local people heard the blast as they watched the climax of the soccer World Cup final early on Monday Moscow time. Basayev was sitting in a car near the truck.

"There was an enormous explosion. All those who were in a radius of the blast were blown to pieces," Beslan Khamkhoyev of Ingushetia's interior ministry was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

"In the morgue there are four bodies of fighters. We calculate that the number of fighters eliminated is 10," Khamkhoyev said.

Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev told Ekho Moskvy radio he doubted the official version. "I think this was a fatal accident," he said by telephone from London.

Basayev, born in 1965, professed to be a devout Muslim. He had links to Islamist militants in other countries. His left foot was blown off by a mine in 2000 and he wore a false one.

In a television interview aired last year, he justified the attack on Beslan by saying Russian civilians, including children, were legitimate targets in his homeland's fight for independence from Moscow.

"We are at war. Russians ... pay their taxes for this war, send their soldiers to this war, their priests sprinkle holy water on the soldiers," said Basayev.

"How can they be innocent? Russians are accomplices in this war," he said in the interview with Britain's Channel 4.

- REUTERS