MOSCOW - Russian security forces killed the regional leader of a rebel group fighting to carve an Islamic state out of the volatile North Caucasus region, news agencies quoted Russia's anti-terrorism committee (NAK) as saying on March 27.
Alim Zankishiyev died in a hail of bullets after a shootout with security forces. He had led the Caucasus Emirate insurgency in Karachayevo-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria provinces, which saw the largest increase in militant violence last year.
President Dmitry Medvedev has called the North Caucasus separatist movement, which killed 37 people in a suicide bombing at Moscow’s busiest airport last year, Russia’s top domestic security problem.
Russia’s anti-terror body said Zankishiyev was hiding in a house in the regional capital Nalchik, where police told him to put down his weapons and give himself up.
"In response he showed resistance and was neutralised in the course of the assault," said Interfax, citing a statement from the committee.
The NAK statement said Zankishiyev was responsible for more than 30 attacks over the past year in the region.
According to independent monitor Kavkaz-uzel, more than 150 people – militants, security forces and civilians – were killed in the two provinces last year, almost twice the number killed there in 2010.
More than a decade after federal troops toppled an Islamist government in Chechnya, security forces are fighting militants in a regionwide insurgency, fuelled by anger at grinding poverty, clan feuds and pervasive corruption.
Russian security forces have eliminated the rebel leadership of several provinces of the North Caucasus, an ethnic and linguistic patchwork between the Black and Caspian seas.
The insurgency is led by Chechen-born Doku Umarov, who claimed responsibility for the airport bombing.
