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NOTE: The follwing post is a quote:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1744330/posts

Russian forces kill 'Al-Qaeda leader' in Dagestan
The News ^ | 26 Nov 2006 | Mir Shakil-ur-Rahman

Posted on 11/26/2006 4:44:29 PM PST by csvset

MAKHACHKALA: Russian forces killed five people including a Jordanian described as an Al-Qaeda leader when shooting broke out at a house in the Caspian province of Dagestan, security sources said.

The clash occurred as forces from Russia's interior ministry and the FSB security service conducted a check on a house in the town of Khasavyurt, an official from the ministry's branch in Dagestan, near the restive province of Chechnya, told journalists at the scene.

"Firing came from the house at 6:00 am (0300 GMT) and the building was surrounded. A special operation was begun to destroy the attackers. It lasted from 6:00 am until 10:00 am," the official said.

One of the five killed was Jordanian fighter Abu-Khavs, a leading Al-Qaeda representative in the Russian Caucasus, the deputy head of the FSB's Dagestan branch Mikhail Merkulov said on national television.

The other dead were three accomplices and the owner of the house, the interior ministry official said.

Abu-Khavs was a Jordanian citizen born in 1973, whose real name was Farid Yusef Umeira, the FSB said in a statement released in Makhachkala, the regional capital of Dagestan.

He "coordinated terrorist activities by foreign mercenaries, illegal armed groups and religious extremists and oversaw the provision of money and equipment received from foreign terrorist and extremist structures," it said.

The statement claimed Abu-Khavs was the "successor" to two other figures allegedly linked to Al-Qaeda and to anti-Russian violence in the region: Abu Al-Walid and a commander known as Khattab, both of whom have been killed in recent years.

The daily Vremia Novostey cited Russian intelligence services claiming that Abu-Khavs financed the bloody 2004 hostage-taking by Chechen separatists at a school in the Russian town of Beslan, in which 332 people died, many of them children.

The pro-Chechen news website Kavkazcenter.com published comments dated November 10 from Abu-Khavs in which he talked of young people joining jihad, or holy war, in the Caucasus region. The interview was accompanied by pictures of him in military clothing.

Russian media have since 2004 linked him to the Al-Qaeda terrorism network and to fighters in Chechnya.

The Rossiya television channel showed the bodies of the five men laid out amid the wreckage of the still-burning building following Sunday's operation.

The killing of Abu-Khavs was hailed by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov as a major success for the security forces.