Senior official gunned down in Moscow

Moscow, Feb 20 (UNI) In a high-profile contract killing, unidentified gunmen last night shot dead the administration head of a prestigious district in south-western Moscow with his driver near the capital.

The city police said Sergei Burkotov's car was making a turn on a highway south of the capital toward his country house, in the village of Lopatino, when it came under automatic gunfire.

The attackers first killed Burkotov's driver Dmitry Samokhvalov and then riddled the car with bullets when it stopped, media reports today said.

Villagers heard the gunshots and called the police, who found the imprints of two bodies in the snow, presumably made by the gunmen as they lay in wait, and two Kalashnikov assault rifles.

The suspects' tracks led to the nearby Simferopolskoye highway, where a car was apparently waiting for them, leading business daily Kommersant reported.

Investigators said the killing could have been related to Burkotov's ''professional activities.'' The official was known to have had several run-ins with developers working in the Cheryomushki borough without the necessary permits.

In 2004, just after Burkotov was appointed local government head, he shut down several construction projects, the paper said, adding conflicts with some developers continued to simmer to date, costing them millions of dollars in losses.

UNI