Yandarbiyev was killed when a bomb blast targeted his car

DOHA, February 13 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, whose extradition from Qatar had been demanded by Russia, was killed in a bomb attack on his car in Doha Friday, February 13.

A Qatari Interior Ministry source told the official Qatar News Agency that Yandarbiyev was killed and his 13-year-old son wounded when a bomb blast targeted their car as they returned from weekly prayers at a Doha mosque.

Another source at Al-Hamad hospital, where Yandarbiyev succumbed to serious injuries sustained in the blast, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that his son, Daoud, was in stable condition.

Yanderbiyev - who was acting Chechen President in 1996 - was living in Qatar for three years and Moscow repeatedly sought his extradition. The Interior Ministry source said he was residing in Qatar “temporarily”.

Qatar's Al-Jazeera news channel earlier said two bodyguards were killed in the attack.

But the hospital official said there were no dead bodyguards and the Interior Ministry statement made no mention of bodyguards.

Russian Extradition Calls

A witness has told AFP that the blast occurred in the Al-Dafna residential area at 1:00 pm (1000 GMT) and the ex-Chechen leader's four-wheel drive vehicle was burned by the explosion.

Russia had demanded Yandarbiyev's extradition from Qatar.

Al-Jazeera's correspondent in Moscow quoted a Russian foreign ministry spokesman as saying after news that he was wounded in an attack that Russia insisted on the request for Doha to hand over the former leader of the Islamic republic.

Russia accused Yandarbiyev of involvement in the seizure of more than 800 hostages by Chechen fighters at a theater in Moscow in October 2002. A total of 129 hostages died, most of them during a police raid to secure their release, as did all 41 Chechen fighters.

Yandarbiyev was interim president after Dzhokhar Dudayev, a former Soviet air force general who launched the Chechen independence movement after the fall of the Soviet Union, was assassinated by Russian forces in 1996.

He was replaced by Aslan Maskhadov, who was elected Chechen president in 1997.

In October 2003, the top pro-Russian administrator in Chechnya, Ahmad Kadyrov, has been "elected" president of the troubled southern republic, amid cries of foul playing and rigging.

In 1999, some 80,000 Russian troops poured into the Caucasus republic in what Moscow called a lightning-strike “anti-terror operation” but which has since degenerated into a bloody invasion of the strategic republic.

The current conflict, the second between Russia and Chechen fighters in a decade, has left around 5,000 Russian soldiers dead -- 12,000 according to rights groups -- and killed thousands of civilians.

It has also driven tens of thousands of Chechens into exile within Russia and abroad.

Russia came under heavy fire for a poor human rights record in Chechnya, that includes random shootings, mass detentions and torture.