RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia said on Friday it had confirmed information that a car owned by a wanted militant has been packed with explosives to be used in what it called a criminal act in the capital Riyadh.
An Interior Ministry statement, carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, gave a description of the car and asked the public to be on alert and inform authorities if they had any information on the vehicle.
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia said on Friday it had confirmed information that a car owned by a wanted militant has been packed with explosives to be used in what it called a criminal act in the capital Riyadh.
An Interior Ministry statement, carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, gave a description of the car and asked the public to be on alert and inform authorities if they had any information on the vehicle.
By JABER AL-HARMI, Associated Press Writer
DOHA, Qatar - Former Chechen President Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, wanted in Russia for terrorist ties and linked to al-Qaida, was assassinated Friday in an explosion that ripped apart his car in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, the Qatari government said.
Yandarbiyev's teenage son was critically wounded in the blast, which occurred as he and his father were driving away from Friday prayers at a mosque, according to an Interior Ministry statement and a local hospital spokesman.
"We are collecting evidence in order to reach the perpetrators," Qatar's chief of security, Mubarak al-Nasr, said on the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, which is based in the country.
Yandarbiyev, who was acting president of Chechnya (news - web sites) in 1996-97, had been linked to the al-Qaida terror group. Russia had been seeking his extradition from Qatar — where he lived for at least three years — accusing him of ties to kidnappers and international terrorists.
Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of holding clandestine talks with Yandarbiyev. He offered no evidence to support the allegation.
However, al-Nasr said Yandarbiyev was living "a normal life" in Qatar and was not involved in any political activities.
Al-Jazeera and fellow Arabic satellite channel Al-Arabiya reported that two people were killed in the explosion. But the Interior Ministry did not confirm this.
An Interior Ministry official said the explosion at 12:45 p.m. killed Yandarbiyev and injured his 13-year-old son, the official Qatar News Agency reported.
A doctor at Hamad General Hospital told The Associated Press that Yandarbiyev died on his way to the hospital. The doctor said his son was in critical condition. No other casualties were brought to the hospital, the doctor said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. Such explosions are almost unheard of in Qatar, a quiet state with tight security.
Last year, the United Nations put Yandarbiyev on a list of people with alleged links to the al-Qaida terrorist group, which is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The U.S. government also put Yandarbiyev on a list of international terrorists who are subject to financial sanctions.
Yandarbiyev was considered a key link in the Chechen rebels' finance network, channeling funds from abroad. He had denied that the Chechen rebels had ties to al-Qaida.
"Yandarbiyev was the main ideologue of the separatists, and therefore of the terrorist organizations bringing Chechnya to such severe consequences," said the president of the Moscow-backed Chechen government, Akhmad Kadyrov.
"He is guilty of everything that has happened," Kadyrov said, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
The Russian Embassy in Doha had no immediate comment on the killing.
Boris Labusov, a spokesman for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, a successor to the KGB, said his agency had nothing to do with Yandarbiyev's death, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
A Russian member of parliament, Nikolai Kovalyov, a former director of the Federal Security Service, told Interfax that the killing was probably a vendetta.
"Knowing the (Chechen) national traditions, I would assume that it must have been the result of a blood feud, as they are never forgotten and passed from generation to generation," Kovalyov said.
Al-Jazeera reported the explosion occurred after Yandarbiyev had prayed at a mosque in the upscale residential area of al-Dafnah, a northern suburb of Doha. He had driven only 300 yards from the mosque when the blast happened.
The channel showed a badly mangled and burned SUV, with only its white fender still recognizable. A body, completely wrapped in white sheet, was loaded into a waiting ambulance.
Russian forces withdrew from Chechnya in 1996 after a disastrous 20-month war with rebels, leaving the republic largely lawless and running its own affairs.
Moscow's troops swept in again in 1999 after Chechnya-based militants launched raids into a neighboring region and after some 300 people were killed in apartment building explosions that Russian officials blamed on Chechen separatists.
Yandarbiyev, who was born in 1952, became vice president of Chechnya under separatist president Dzhokhar Dudayev. He served as acting president during Chechnya's de facto independence in 1996-97. In 1996, he led the rebel delegation in peace negotiations with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
A poet and author of children's book, Yandarbiyev became one of the most prominent proponents of radical Islam among the Chechen rebels. He came in third in Chechnya's 1997 presidential elections, behind moderate Aslan Maskhadov and the fiery rebel Shamil Basayev.
During the rule of the Islamic militant Taliban in Aghanistan in 1996-2001, Yandarbiyev opened a Chechen Embassy in the Aghan capital, Kabul, and a consulate in the southern city of Kandahar.
Chechen exiles living elswhere in the Middle East said Yandarbiyev had been living in Qatar since the summer of 2000. They said he had maintained contact with other Chechens since arriving in Qatar, but they claimed to have no knowledge of his involvement in any terrorism-related acts.
In recent years, Qatar has granted entry to a variety of Muslim politicians and militants seeking refuge, including Palestinian Hamas leaders, Algerian Muslim fundamentalists and Iraqi officials of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime.
The Qataris say that they accept such visitors because of the Arab traditions of providing hospitality to guests and of offering sanctuary to refugees.
However, the practice also serves to defuse anger at Qatar for allowing the United States to establish military bases in the small Gulf sheikdom. The U.S. command set up shop in Qatar before launching last year's war in Iraq (news - web sites) and continues to maintain a military presence there.