Chechen guerrillas have executed a Russian hostage after Moscow had declined to swap him for Chechens arrested earlier by federal forces, the Chechen rebel website Kavkaz.org reported yesterday.
A Russian defence ministry official declined to confirm the death of Lieut-Col Sergei Boryayev, captured by Chechen separatist fighters on September 29th, but said he could not rule out the possibility he had been killed.
A separatist warlord, Khattab (one name), told Kavkaz.org he had executed Lieut-Col Boryayev after Russian authorities had refused to free 25 Chechens captured by federal forces.
Khattab (33) is a radical Islamic Wahhabite of Jordanian or Saudi origin and has about 700 fighters under his command, including Turks, Arabs or Chinese ethnic Uighurs.
Moscow accuses him of masterminding a series of terrorist bombings in 1999 which killed 293 people in Russia, although no link has been proven.
Separately, two members of federal forces in Chechnya were killed over the last 24 hours, the Russian news agencies reported yesterday. A Russian policeman died and another was injured in skirmishes with separatist fighters, Interfax quoted a pro-Russian Chechen government official as saying without specifying where the incident happened.
A member of the Russian interior ministry's forces was killed and another injured when rebels attacked a Russian checkpoint in central Chechnya, the RIA Novosti news agency quoted an official with the ministry's Chechnya department as saying.
Meanwhile, police discovered human remains which had been buried near Grozny, the Russian Prosecutor for Chechnya, Mr Vsevolod Chernoye, said.
The bodies were those of civilians who had been shot, Mr Chernoye said, adding that an inquiry had been opened. Russian forces entered Chechnya on October 1st, 1999 to put down a separatist insurgency in what Moscow has described as an anti-terrorist operation.