Report: Russia's "bin Laden" Umarov may have been killed

Mar 29, 2011, 10:15 GMT

Moscow - Russian special forces may have killed Chechnya's top terrorism suspect, Doku Umarov, who claimed responsibility for the January bombing at Moscow's Domododevo airport, the Interfax news agency reported Tuesday. There was no official confirmation.

Umarov is believed to have been among 17 suspected terrorists killed Monday in an attack on a terrorist training camp in Ingushetia in the volatile North Caucasus region. But he has been declared dead before.

Islamist leaders and Umarov's bodyguard were among the dead, said the president of the Republic of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, but the bodies had not yet been identified. Three security force members were also killed in Monday's attack.

Meanwhile, Russian investigators on Tuesday said they had officially accused Umarov and another suspected Chechen terrorist, Aslan Byutukayev, of organizing the Domodedovo attack.

'The Investigative Committee has decided to bring charges against active members of militant groups, including Umarov and Byutukayev,' the spokesman of the country's top investigative agency, Vladimir Markin, told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Thirty-eight people died and 150 were wounded in the airport attack. Umarov has also claimed responsibility for the bombing of a Moscow subway in 2010 that killed 40.

Umarov, 46, calls himself the 'emir of the Caucasus.' In Muslim- dominated Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan, numerous Islamist militant groups have been fighting for an independent 'emirate' in the North Caucasus.

Russia's federal North Caucasus region - which includes the republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia and Kabardino-Balkaria - is a powder keg. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the area has witnessed struggles for independence, conflicts and terrorist attacks.

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