Police in Chechnya killed rebel leader Abdul-Khalim Sadulayev during a special operation today, authorities said.
Sadulayev was killed by regional police in his hometown of Argun, the press service of Moscow-backed Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov said.
The Interfax news agency quoted Muslim Khuchiyev, a minister in the local administration, as saying that police acted on a tip, tracked down Sadulayev and killed him when he offered resistance.
Sadulayev had succeeded Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, who was killed by Russian forces last year.
Sadulayev's killing, if confirmed, would be further evidence that the rebels' position is weakening in Chechnya even as Islamic-inspired insurgents have spread their influence across the volatile North Caucasus region.
"The terrorists have been virtually beheaded. They have sustained a severe blow, and they are never going to recover from it," the Interfax news agency quoted Mr Kadyrov as saying.
Sadulayev, a fundamentalist field commander, was relatively unknown outside rebel circles. He had served as a judge of the Chechen rebels' Shariat committee - an extension of the Islamic court established under Maskhadov when he was Chechnya's elected president in the 1990s.
Chechnya's separatist movement initially was rooted in nationalist sentiment, but in recent years has taken on a growing Islamic tendency.
Sadulayev had promoted efforts to spread the rebel movement beyond Chechnya's borders in the so-called "Caucasus Front" and attack Russian forces across the poverty-stricken and corruption-gripped south.
AP