Basayev led some of the most spectacular military operations against Russian forces, but was criticized for hostage-takings and attacks on civilians.

MOSCOW — Chechen independence fighters who have been battling Russian troops in the small mountainous republic for decades confirmed on Monday, July 10, the death of their top leader Shamil Basayev but scoffed at the Russian version of killing him in a special operation.

Federal Security Service (FSB) chief Nikolai Patrushev told President Vladimir Putin Monday that Basayev died in an operation by special forces in Ingushetia, a region neighboring Chechnya, reported Reuters.

He claimed Basayev was preparing to carry out an unspecified "terrorist act" in Ingushetia to compromise the Kremlin in the run-up to the Group of Eight summit later this week in Saint Petersburg.

Putin, himself a former FSB chief, congratulated "all members of the special services who planned and executed this operation."

He said the killing of Basayev was "deserved retribution" for his attacks against Russians, especially the Beslan school tragedy.

Basayev had claimed responsibility for the bloody 2004 Beslan school attack.

More than 331 people, half of them children, were killed in Beslan after Russian forces tried to end a siege of the school by Chechen fighters.

The Kremlin-backed President of Chechnya, Alu Alkhanov, said the slaying of Basayev was a decisive turning point in the battle of Russian forces against Chechen fighters.

Chechnya has been ravaged by conflict since 1994, with just three years of relative peace after the first war between Russian forces and Chechen fighters ended in August 1996 and the second broke out in October 1999.

At least 100,000 civilians -- about 10 percent of the population -- are estimated to have been killed in both wars, but human rights groups have said the real numbers could be much higher.

Thousands of refugees from war-torn Chechnya live in battered tent camps in neighboring Ingushetia and refuse to return home because of continuing insecurity.

Accident

Chechen fighters confirmed the death of Basayev, but said he died "accidentally" in an explosion of a convoy transporting explosives.

"The Chechen commander died following the accidental explosion of a truck transporting explosives on July 10, 2006, near the village of Ekazhevo, in Ingushetia," they said in a statement published on a website, Kavkazcenter.com, which they use frequently to make announcements.

Local Ingush police said Basayev was in a vehicle accompanying the truck with explosives late Sunday.

"There was an enormous explosion. All those who were in a radius of the blast were blown to pieces," Ingushetia's Interior Ministry Beslan Khamkhoyev was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

"In the morgue there are four bodies of fighters. We calculate that the number of fighters eliminated is 10," he said, adding the operation had been meticulously planned.

Chechen envoy Akhmed Zakayev told Ekho Moskvy radio that he doubted the official version.

"I do not believe there was some operation carried out by Patrushev and his colleagues. I think this was a fatal accident," he said by telephone from London.

Key Figure

Basayev was at the core of the fierce independence fight in Chechnya.

Born in 1965, he was raised in Dyshne-Vedeno, a Chechen village at the heart of territory with a tradition opposition to Moscow.

He was brought up by the generation of Chechens who had just returned to their homeland after being exiled by Russian dictator Josef Stalin to Kazakhstan and Siberia.

Basayev was a talented footballer who studied at an engineering institute in Moscow and at an Islamic institute in Istanbul.

He repeatedly boasted that his ancestors fought alongside Imam Shamil, the legendary 19th century resistance warrior.

He was widely regarded as an exceptional and fearless military commander whose rag-tag forces inflicted major defeats on the Russian army in Grozny and the Caucasus mountains.

In the first Chechen war, Basayev emerged as the most effective field commander.

He was also the principal commander in the recapture of Grozny in August 1996 -- one of the biggest humiliations the modern Russian military has faced.

He led some of the most spectacular military operations against Russian forces, but was recently criticized for a series of hostage-takings, which ended in civilian bloodbaths.

Basayev, who lost 11 relatives in a Russian air attack on Vedeno in 1995, insisted that the devastation wreaked by Russia's military campaigns on the Chechen people justified attacks on Russian civilians.

The Beslan attack, however, had pitted him against Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov, who was assassinated by Russian forces last year.

Maskhadov blasted Basayev for the school operation, vowing to put him on trial once fighting between Chechen fighters and the Russian army comes to an end.

A former Soviet army officer, Maskhadov heavily defeated Basayev in a presidential election in an independent Chechnya in 1997, but afterwards appointed him deputy prime minister.

Maskhadov said Basayev's methods were too extreme and forced him out of the Chechen leadership in 2002.

Basayev became deputy leader of the Chechen fighters after Maskhadov was assassinated.