MOSCOW — A Chechen rebel leader accused of orchestrating deadly terrorist attacks against Russians was killed in a raid by security forces in northern Chechnya, military officials said Tuesday, providing a boost to President Vladimir Putin in his campaign against the separatists.
Aslan Maskhadov, 53, was killed during a "special operation" conducted in Tolstoy-Yurt, a village in the northern part of the war-torn republic near the capital Grozny, Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev told Putin in a televised meeting.
Russian television showed what appeared to be Maskhadov's body lying in a pool of blood on a concrete floor, his arms spread out to each side.
Patrushev said three of the Maskhadov's aides were arrested earlier in the day. Military officials said that the rebels were planning a terrorist attack on a regional administration building, Russian news reports said.
Chechen separatists had not confirmed Maskhadov's death early Wednesday, but a London-based spokesman for the rebel leader told Russia's Ekho Moskvy radio that the reports were most likely correct.
The Chechen "resistance will continue, no doubt about it," said the spokesman, Akhmed Zakayev.
The Russian military has claimed several times in the past to have killed Maskhadov. Putin asked the chief of the FSB, the successor agency of the KGB, to ensure that the body was properly identified.
The death of Maskhadov raises the specter of retaliatory attacks by Chechen militants, blamed for killing 430 people in bombings and other attacks against Russians last year.
It also silences what some considered to be a voice of moderation in hopes that Russian and Chechen leaders could negotiate a settlement to end a decade of fighting.
Maskhadov had recently called for face-to-face talks with Putin. Last month, he sought a weeklong cease-fire before the 61st anniversary of the Stalin-ordered deportation of Chechens to Siberia and Central Asia.
Russian officials had dismissed the cease-fire call as insincere and said violence by rebel forces continued in the tiny republic on Russia's southern flank. They have insisted that Maskhadov played a role in planning the Beslan school massacre last year and the 2002 seizure of 800 hostages at a Moscow theater.
U.S. and Europe officials have urged Putin to find a "political solution" in Chechnya, but Putin has refused to meet with rebel leaders — men he has called international terrorists.
John Dunlop, an expert on Russia and Chechnya, called Maskhadov's death "distressing because it takes the one avenue of negotiation out of the picture."
"Maskhadov's death will increase Putin's resolve to crush the rebellion," said Dunlop, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a public policy research center at Stanford University. "He can now turn to the Europeans, who have been putting a lot of heat on him, and say, 'Look, there is no one to sit down with."'
Russia's Interfax news agency reported that security forces had hoped to capture Maskhadov alive in the raid. Quoting Ramzan Kadyrov, the first deputy prime minister of Chechnya's Moscow-backed government, Interfax said Maskhadov was killed by accident in the crossfire of the operation.
Maskhadov has been a key player in the Chechen fight for independence since the first Chechen war from 1994 to 1996. He was elected president of the republic in 1997, but was ousted two years later in favor of Shamil Basayev.
Basayev, still at large, is considered to be the more militant leader of the two. After the Beslan hostage siege last year left more than 340 dead, many of them children, the Kremlin offered a $10 million reward for information leading to the capture or death of Maskhadov or Basayev.
The second Chechen war began in 1999, when Putin sent Russian troops back in to the republic. Tens of thousands of people, including Russian soldiers, rebel fighters and civilians have died in the decade of intermittent conflict.
Putin has said the Chechen rebels are cooperating with international terrorist organizations, including those connected with al-Qaida.
"We have to gather our forces to protect the people of the republic and citizens of all Russia from the bandits," Putin said in the televised meeting with the FSB director. The soldiers involved in the special operation would be rewarded, he said.