"Now it can be said for sure that the militant killed by Russian border guards in Dagestan is one of the leaders of Chechen separatists, Ruslan Gelayev," FSB public relations center head, Col. Sergei Ignatchenko told RIA Novosti Tuesday.
"In the last 24 hours, the personality of the killed militant was identified in Makhachkala (Dagestan's capital)," he said.
According to the data of the North Caucasus regional department of the FSB Border Guard Service, Gelayev was killed on Saturday by a border guard detail in Dagestan's mountains on a road leading to Georgia.
By the information received by RIA Novosti from border guard sources, Gelayev was killed by a detail of two border guards, who died in the clash too.
The sources said on February 29, the bodies of two Russian FSB border guards with gunshot wounds were discovered in the mountains on the snow on a road leading to Georgia. They were identified as sergeant-major Suleimanov and sergeant Kurbanov, local residents who were contract servicemen.
The body of a militant in camouflage uniform was found near the killed border guards. The militant had a Kalashnikov assault rifle, three magazines with rounds, a grenade and Wahhabite literature. It was Gelayev.
