A prominent Russian human rights activist, Viktor Popkov, is comatose after being seriously wounded in an attack in the breakaway republic of Chechnya, Russian deputy Yury Shchekochikhin said Saturday.
Taken to hospital Friday suffering from injuries to the head, Popkov was comatose and in a critical condition, Shchekochikhin told the Interfax news aagency.
According to media reports, Popkov was wounded after unidentified gunmen fired automatic weapons at a car in which he was travelling with a local doctor near Alkhan-Kala, five kilometers (three miles) southwest of Grozny.
The doctor and the driver of the car were also wounded, the NTV.ru website reported.
Shchekochikhin said Popkov had undergone complex surgery for a wound to the carotid artery and needed donor blood.
He had spoken with the head of the military hospital in Vladikavkas, the North Ossetian capital where Popkov was taken, and "called on the International (Committee of the) Red Cross to help our friend," Interfax quoted him as saying.
The attack on Popkov was a "monstrous" action which again demonstrates the "cruel and pointless nature of this war," he said.
"Popkov is one of our best-known human rights defenders. He has been in Chechnya since 1995 and has saved a great many prisoners of war," he said earlier on Moscow Echo radio.
The radio said Popkov was in Chechnya on a humanitarian mission, distributing medicine to mountain communities.
Chechnya is a predominantly Muslim republic in Russia's Northern Caucasus region where Moscow has been fighting separatist rebels since October 1999, having fought an earlier major conflict there in 1994-96 – MOSCOW (AFP)
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