LUHANSK. May 25 (Interfax) - A distractive bomb exploded first and machine-gun fire was opened later in the assassination of commander of Prizrak (Ghost) brigade Alexei Mozgovoy near Luhansk, chief of the investigative department of the Prosecutor General's Office of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) Leonid Tkachenko has said.
He said the assassination took place around 5:40-5:45 p.m. on Saturday and law enforcers were alerted at 6:10 p.m. Teams of investigators from the prosecutor's office, the Interior Ministry and the town of Perevalsk worked at the scene.
"Reconstructing the situation on the basis of examining the scene of the crime it was established that Alexei Mozgovoy, two of his bodyguards, a woman press secretary and the driver were killed. That makes five people. Besides, two vehicles absolutely unrelated to the Prizrak battalion came under fire: a Volkswagen minibus - a civilian was simply driving by and came under fire and a VAZ-2104 car - the driver died in the Perevalsk town hospital and a woman passenger died at the scene," Tkachenko said at a briefing.
"There were at least three gunmen," he said. "There were many more people, of course, considering that there was definitely some cover group. Probably several. In any case it is a fact that there were two machine-guns of 762mm caliber," he said.
"Several theories are being considered, the main one being that the murder was staged by a Ukrainian saboteur group," he said.
A criminal case of murder of two and more people was launched on Sunday.
The LPR Prosecutor General, the head of LPR and the Deputy Interior Minister supervise the investigation.
Investigative and operative efforts continue at the scene.