MOSCOW. Dec 22 (Interfax-AVN) - Three policemen were wounded and an associate of warlord Shamil Basayev was killed in a shootout in Grozny, the Russian Interior Ministry's provisional press center in the North Caucasus said on Wednesday.
Rebels fired automatic rifles at officers of the riot police detachment under the Chechen Interior Ministry, when the latter were conducting a special operation in the Leninsky district of Grozny, a press center official told Interfax-Military News Agency.
"An associate of Shamil Basayev, who was born in 1975 and resided in the Belgatoi village in the Shali district, was killed by return fire," the official said.
Arms and ammunition, as well as fake forms, IDs and stamps of the Chechen Interior Ministry, were seized from the house where the shootout occurred.
Spokesman for the regional headquarters directing anti-guerilla efforts in the North Caucasus Major General Ilya Shabalkin told Interfax on Wednesday that the destroyed rebel was suspected of kidnapping.
"Militant Isa Sakayev was killed in an operation in Grozny overnight to Tuesday. He is suspected of kidnapping foreign citizens," Shabalkin said.
The guerrilla is believed to have abducted and executed four foreigners - three British citizens and one New Zealander - who were engaged in reviving Chechnya's mobile phone services, the spokesman said.
Meanwhile, policemen in the Novogroznensky village in the Gudermes district detained two locals, born in 1978 and 1985, who were involved in the attack on the villages of Avtury and Alleroi as members of warlord Avdorkhanov's gang in July and September 2004.
Arms and ammo caches were found in the village of Voznesenskaya in Ingushetia's Malogbek district and in the villages of Raduzhnoye and Starye Atagi in Chechnya's Grozny rural district on Tuesday, the press center official said.