Law enforcement officers in southern Russia killed an alleged Chechen terrorist suspected of leading a group that plotted to seize a school if the deadly 2004 school seizure in Beslan failed, officials said on Saturday.
Suspect Aslanbek Khatuyev was killed in a brief exchange of gunfire after resisting police and security officers during a document check in a settlement for Chechen refugees in the neighbouring Ingushetia region, Interior Ministry spokesman Roman Shchekotin said.
The officers were unaware of the man's identity during the shootout, he said.
Prosecutors said last year that Khatuyev was the leader of a group of 11 Chechen militants who planned to seize an elementary school in Ingushetia in the event that the Sept. 1, 2004 attack on School No. 1 in Beslan, in neighbouring North Ossetia, was thwarted.
Four of the suspects were detained in April in Chechnya, they said.
The Beslan attack killed 331 people, more than half of them children.