This is as large a victory as the killing of Zarqawi, in another front of global jihad. “Most-wanted Chechen rebel Basayev killed,” from AP, with thanks to Satinder:
MOSCOW – Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev, the purported author of modern Russia’s worst terrorist attacks, was killed Monday, the head of the Federal Security Service said.
Vladimir Putin that Basayev had been killed overnight in Ingushetia “” a republic bordering Chechnya that was plagued by sporadic spillover violence from the separatist region. Patrushev’s meeting with Putin was shown on Russian state television.
Basayev, 41, claimed responsibility for some of Russia’s worst terror attacks, including the seizure of some 800 hostages in a Moscow theater in 2002, the 2004 school hostage taking in Beslan that killed 331, and the seizure of about 1,000 hostages at a hospital in Budyonnovsk that killed about 100.