A leader of Wahhabi militants in Russia"s...

On Wednesday evening, two men resisted local security service personnel. During the shootout, one of the militants was killed, and the second wounded, but managed to escape. One police officer was also wounded in the operation.

"Investigators compared the fingerprints of the militant with existing fingerprint databases," a spokesman from the investigative committee said. "The dead militant was almost immediately identified as Anzor Astemirov, born in 1976, and the head of a gang," he said.

Astemirov is suspected of organizing an attack on the local drug control administration in December 2004, and militant attacks in the republic"s capital of Nalchik in October 2005.

Astemirov was on an international wanted list for murder, terrorist attacks, arms trafficking and several other crimes.

Wahhabism is considered an extremist and intolerant form of Islam.

Russia"s mainly Muslim North Caucasus republics have seen an upsurge of militant violence lately,

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