MOSCOW, September 13 (RIA Novosti) – The leader of the so-called “Kizlyar gang” of Islamists was killed in Dagestan after three months on the job, Russia’s National Anti-Terrorism Committee said on Thursday.
Oki “Bilal” Nazhmudinov was killed along with another insurgent, whose name was withheld, in a skirmish with law enforcers in the North Caucasus republic, the report said.
Police continued the hunt for members of the insurgency group, which was blocked outside Kizlyar and fought back with gunfire, the committee said.
Nazhmudinov, born in 1980, was linked to a blast in Kizlyar that killed 12 in 2010 and to a shooting of a local deputy imam later the same year.
He became the head of the “Kizlyar gang” after his predecessor, Rustam Gasanov, was shot dead along with six others in June in a run-in with law enforcement.
Nazhmudinov’s brother Sakhratulla, nicknamed “Pushtun,” headed another insurgency group, the “Buinaksk gang,” but was killed in action last year, the committee said.