Russian police kills Dagestani rebel

MOSCOW

Leader of the Islamist insurgency in the Northern Caucasus, Doku Umarov, records an appeal in an undisclosed location. AFP photo

Russian security forces have killed a leader of an Islamist rebel group in the North Caucasus accused of plotting a botched suicide attack in Moscow, Russian media reported yesterday. Ibragim-Khalil Daudov was found dead in a forest on Feb. 14 after being wounded over the weekend in a shootout when police stormed a nearby house where he was hiding in the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan, daily Kommersant said. Daudov escaped after the shootout, in which four gunmen were killed, but suffered severe blood loss and froze to death, Kommersant quoted security officers as saying. “The neutralization of the militant leader made it possible to thwart criminal acts he was planning,” a representative of the National Counterterrorism Committee told Itar-Tass.

Russia is struggling to contain a growing insurgency in the North Caucasus. Daudov was a senior leader of the Caucasus Emirate, a rebel group that is fighting to carve out an Islamist state across the North Caucasus.