Russian war reporter shot dead in Moscow

MOSCOW, Oct 7 (Reuters) Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of war in rebel Chechnya, was shot dead at her apartment block in central Moscow today.

Politkovskaya, a mother of two, was well-known for exposing rights abuses by Russian troops and remained critical of Moscow's campaign despite intense government pressure.

''The first thing that comes to mind is that Anna was killed for her professional activities. We don't see any other motive for this terrible crime,'' said Vitaly Yaroshevsky, deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked.

Yaroshevsky told Reuters that sources in the police and Politkovskaya's own son had both confirmed her death.

''Chechnya has always been her main subject,'' he said.

''Everything she wrote was on the edge.'' Novaya Gazeta is known for being critical of the Kremlin.

Politkovskaya's war reporting often meant she was under scrutiny by Russian politicians and, sometimes, the security services. She had been arrested and complained of sometimes being threatened.

Interfax news agency quoted police sources as saying her body was discovered in a lift by a neighbour at 1710 hrs. Police officers found a pistol and four rounds abandoned in the lift, it reported.

Police had cordoned off the scene outside her nine-storey Soviet-era apartment block.

''BRAVE REPORTER'' Journalists rights groups condemned the killing.

''She was an intrepid and brave reporter who repeatedly risked her life to report the news from that region. It's a devastating development for journalism in Russia,'' said Abi Wright, spokeswoman for the Committee to Protect Journalists.

''This devastating news fits into a larger pattern that we have documented in Russia with over a dozen murders of journalists there. For someone of her reputation to be murdered, it's a terrible blow,'' she said in New York.

Jean-Francois Julliard of Reporters Without Borders said in Paris: ''Russia is a violent country and violent to journalists.'' Former President Boris Yeltsin sent troops into Chechnya in December 1994 after it declared independence, but mass rebel hostage-takings and fierce fighting led to a truce. President Vladimir Putin, then prime minister, sent Russian troops back in after Chechen hardliners invaded an adjacent region in 1999.

Rebels still attack Russian troops despite the efforts of a string of Moscow-installed local leaders. The Chechen campaign led to devastation in large areas of Chechnya and thousands of deaths, but was backed strongly by Russian leaders who saw it as essential to maintain the unity of the vast Russsian Federation.

Politkovskaya acted as a negotiator with Chechen rebels who laid siege to a Moscow theatre in 2002.

She was unable to report on the Beslan school siege two years later, when Chechen rebels took hundreds of children hostage. She instead was taken to hospital with food poisoning after drinking a cup of tea on the plane.

Contract killings are not unusual in Moscow where gang violence reigned after the fall of communism in 1991. Reporters have also been targets.

US journalist Paul Klebnikov was murdered in 2004 in Moscow. The editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine was shot four times as he left his office in central Moscow on July 9 of that year. His killers have not been found.

A source close to the case told Reuters the investigation was focusing on a possible link between Klebnikov's murder and his interest in the possible misappropriation of Russian funds intended for the reconstruction of Chechnya.

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