Another pro-Moscow Chechen official was shot dead by secessionist rebels earlier this week, the office of the Kremlin advisor for the Chechen conflict said Wednesday.
The murder of Lechi Yeshurkayev, 52, the administrative head of the province of Kurchaloi, is the latest in a spate of attacks targeting Chechen officials sympathetic to Moscow.
Yeshurkayev was shot in the head Monday by three unidentified gunmen after he refused to get out of his car on the outskirts of Kurchaloi, southeast of the Chechen capital Grozny, said Sergei Yastrzhembsky's office.
A message threatening all Chechens who collaborate with Russian authorities was found next to the body, said the Russian interior ministry's Chechen branch, quoted by RIA Novosti.
Agents close to Chechnya's rebel president, Aslan Maskhadov, claimed responsibility for the killing in a telephone call with an AFP correspondent in Sleptsovk, in the province of Ingushetia.
"The attack on the administrative chief of Kurchaloi was carried out by agents of the Chechen national security ministry. He was hauled out of his car and killed, but the Chechen special forces were not interested in the passengers accompanying him," the rebel president's press office told AFP.
Moscow has not recognised Maskhadov's legitimacy since it launched an attack on the northern Caucasus republic on October 1, 1999.
"Over 50 people have been killed for collaborating with the occupiers. They were all warned in advance to end their collaboration" with the pro-Russian administration, added the press official.
The administrative chief's murder is the latest in a long spate of attacks on pro-Moscow Chechen officials, considered traitors by pro-independence fighters.
Among the victims is the deputy-head of Urus-Martan province, killed in August along with the head of Nojai-Yurt, while in July, the provincial head of Alkhan-Yurt was murdered by unidentified gunmen.
Meanwhile, Chechnya's pro-Russian administration said Wednesday four Russian control posts were fired at overnight in the capital Grozny and in Gudermes, leaving a soldier wounded, reported Itar-Tass.
Another soldier was wounded when his car was ambushed southwest of Grozny, on a road near the town of Achkhoi-Martan.
Russian forces rolled into Chechnya on the pretext if an anti-terrorist operation that at one stage involved some 100,000 troops.
They have since claimed full control over the separatist republic, but pro-independence rebels mount almost daily attacks on Russian forces in the breakaway republic and dozens of Russian soldiers are being killed in the region every week -- SLEPTSOVK, Russia (AFP)
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