The mayor of a Russian city near the Georgian separatist region of South Ossetia was killed Wednesday when an assassin fired a bullet into his chest near his home, officials said.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev immediately demanded that Russian police "take all possible measures" to find the killer of Vitaly Karayev, the mayor of Vladikavkaz, capital of Russia's North Ossetia region.
Karayev died in hospital after a bullet ripped through his heart and lungs, said Boris Digurov, the head doctor at the main hospital in Vladikavkaz, where the mayor was brought after being shot near his home.
"He was nearly a corpse when he was brought in and he died on the operating table," Digurov told AFP.
The shooting "happened around 9:00 am (0600 GMT) in the courtyard of his home as he was going out. He received several bullet wounds as he stepped outside. Evidently it was a sniper," a regional interior ministry source told AFP.
North Ossetian President Taimuraz Mamsurov accused unnamed forces of carrying out the killing in order to destabilise the region.
"I view the death of the mayor of Vladikavkaz, Vitaly Sergeyevich Karayev, one of my colleagues, as a challenge issued by forces seeking to destabilise the situation in North Ossetia," Mamsurov told reporters.
Speaking after an emergency meeting with security officials, Mamsurov said all the major crimes in North Ossetia over the past year remained unsolved, calling it "nothing but a breakdown in the work of law enforcement agencies."
Medvedev ordered law enforcement agencies "to take all possible measures" to solve the crime, the Kremlin said in a statement.
Karayev had only served as the mayor of Vladikavkaz since February.
North Ossetia shares a border and close ethnic ties to South Ossetia, the separatist Georgian region at the heart of August's brief war between Russia and Georgia.
It was from North Ossetia that Russia poured troops into Georgia on August 8 to repel a Georgian military attempt to retake South Ossetia, whose separatist administration has received extensive backing from Moscow.
North Ossetia also has a history of attacks carried out by Chechen rebels, including the 2004 school hostage crisis in the town of Beslan, which led to the deaths of more than 330 hostages, many of them children.
Earlier this month, Vladikavkaz was hit with a deadly suicide bombing when a woman strapped with explosives and shrapnel detonated them in the city centre, killing 11 people as well as herself and wounding dozens of others.
Officials have so far not identified the woman or the motive behind the November 6 attack.
Wednesday's assassination in North Ossetia came less than 24 hours after three alleged rebel fighters were killed in incidents throughout Russia's volatile North Caucaus, according to the Interfax news agency.
In war-ravaged Chechnya, a police source said on Wednesday that two alleged rebels had been killed in a shoot-out in the regional capital Grozny the previous evening, Interfax said.
Separately, one alleged rebel was killed in a clash with authorities in the neighbouring Ingushetia region, in which three soldiers were also wounded, Interfax quoted a military official as saying.
Sustained fighting between the Russian army and Chechen separatists ended years ago, but attacks on local officials and security forces still occur frequently in Chechnya, Ingushetia and other parts of the North Caucasus.
