MAKHACHKALA, January 30 (RIA Novosti) - A close aide to Russia's most wanted terrorist has been detained in the Daghestan port of Derbent, the republic's Interior Ministry said Monday.
Akhmed Yunusov, 34, a warlord close to Shamil Basayev, was among three militants captured in an operation on Sunday.
Basayev has taken responsibility for a string of bloody terrorist attacks in Russia, including the Beslan school tragedy, which claimed the lives of 331 people.
Yunusov shot himself in the chest in an attempt to commit suicide during the arrest, but was taken to a hospital and underwent surgery that kept him alive, a ministry representative said.
In a separate operation in Daghestan, five militants - including the so-called "commander of the Northern Front of Ichkeria," Lechi Eskiyev - were killed in the city of Khasavyurt, in the west of the republic, the ministry also said.
Ichkeria is the name militants use for Chechnya.
A police officer is reported to have been wounded in the operation.
"He received medical assistance, but was not hospitalized," a doctor from a hospital in Khasavyurt said.
