Beslan mastermind Basayev killed

Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel leader who claimed responsibility for the bloody 2004 Beslan school siege, was killed on Monday, Russian officials and a rebel website said.

Shamil Basayev, the Chechen rebel leader who claimed responsibility for the bloody 2004 Beslan school siege, was killed on Monday, Russian officials and a rebel website said.

Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev told President Vladimir Putin in a televised meeting that Basayev and many other rebels had been killed in the operation overnight in Ingushetia, a republic bordering Chechnya .

A major Chechen rebel website, Kavkaz-Center, confirmed the death calling Basayev 8216;8216;a martyr.8217;8217; On the website, Abu Umar, representing the rebel parliament8217;s military committee, said 8216;8216;There was no special operation. Shamil and other brothers of ours became martyrs by the will of Allah.8217;8217;

Patrushev gave no details of the operation in his televised remarks, but an Ingush regional Interior Ministry official said Basayev was among four militants killed while accompanying a truck filled with 100 kilograms of dynamite that blew up in the Ingush village of Ekazhevo on Monday.

The Interfax news agency cited Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev as offering the same version of events and saying Basayev had been in a car accompanying the truck. He said Basayev8217;s body had been identified 8216;8216;through some of the fragments, including his head,8217;8217; Interfax reported.

Basayev was emblematic of the radicalization of the Chechen rebel movement8212;which had started as a secular fight for independence8212;and its increasing domination by Islamic extremists. His killing, while a huge victory for Putin8217;s fight against terrorism, would be unlikely to end an insurgency that has spread to communities across Russia8217;s predominantly Muslim south.

A June 1995 attack on a hospital in the southern Russian town of Budyonnovsk, in which some 1,000 people were taken hostage and about 100 killed, was Basayev8217;s first major terror attack. Dozens more were killed when Russian troops unsuccessfully stormed the hospital.

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The September 2004 attack on the Beslan school, in which 331 victims were killed, shocked Russia and divided the rebel movement because civilians, including women and children, were taken hostage.

Newly appointed Chechen rebel leader Doku Umarov had last month named Basayev as his vice president. It was unclear whether that represented a radicalization of Umarov8217;s faction or whether it was an attempt to rein in Basayev by Umarov, who has pledged not to attack civilians. The rebels8217; London-based envoy, Akhmed Zakayev, told AP on Monday that he plans to issue a 8216;8216;manifesto for peace in Chechnya8217;8217; to G-8 leaders this week.