Russian security forces kill Chechen warlord of ''Budennovsk fame'

Moscow, Apr 16 (UNI) Russian security forces have killed Chechen warlord Umar Isakov who was involved in the terrorist attack on a hospital in the town of Budennovsk in 1995.

The warlord had been hiding from police for more than 10 years.

The press service of the Chechen branch of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB, ex-KGB) said the local branch of the FSB yesterday surrounded a private house in the village of Kady-Yurt, where Umar Isakov was tipped to be hiding.

''The bandit tried to break through the cordon when he was asked to surrender. He was killed while trying to hurl a grenade,'' Itar-Tass news agency quoted the press service as saying.

Isakov was involved in a number of grave crimes. Besides Budennovsk, he participated in an attack on Gudermes in 2001.

Chechen terrorists led by warlord Shamil Basayev had taken hostage of 1,800 patients in the hospital in Budennovsk, for several days. One-hundred-forty people were killed during the operation of the security forces and over 500 people had been wounded. It was one of the first major terrorist attacks by Chechen militants under former President Boris Yeltsin.

Meanwhile, the Chechen Interior Ministry today said two Interior Ministry troops were killed and five injured in an attack in the troubled region yesterday.

The attack occurred in the village of Dargo in the Vedeno district in the southeast of Chechnya. An infantry combat vehicle hit a remote controlled mine that killed one and injured another soldier.

Immediately after the explosion, unidentified gunment opened fire on the troops. A few minutes later, another bomb went off several meters away from the scene of the first explosion, killing one and wounding four troops.

The Ministry said that the police found a big arms cache, including a large amount of explosives, during a search operation in a forest in the Nozhai-Yurt district in the southern Chechnya.

Measures are being taken to find the owners of the caches.

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