THE Chechen terrorist behind the Beslan school massacre was killed by Russian security forces with the help of a mole who betrayed him for £250,000, according to intelligence sources quoted in a Moscow newspaper.

Shamil Basayev, the leader of the Chechen resistance and Russia’s most wanted man, is said to have been blown up by a mine that the informant placed in a lorry load of explosives and set off by remote control.

The claim was made by Viktor Baranyets, a military expert and former defence ministry official, in Komsomolskaya Pravda. “The security forces are being very tight-lipped about how Basayev was killed but after dozens of calls I have established through intelligence sources that he was betrayed by one of his own men,” said Baranyets.

His sources told him that the FSB, the former KGB, which had been hunting Basayev for nearly a decade, learnt that he was planning a terrorist attack during this weekend’s G8 summit.

According to the sources, Basayev — known as Russia’s Bin Laden — was planning to detonate a lorry bomb at the interior ministry headquarters in Nazran, the former capital of Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya.

The Russians are said to have stopped the attack and killed Basayev by recruiting one of his men.

As the terrorist and a group of his fighters escorted the convoy of explosives through the night, the mole set off an explosive charge in the lorry.

According to the Ingush interior ministry, the lorry was carrying 100 rocket-propelled grenades, two grenade-launchers and more than 13,000 rounds of ammunition. Basayev was decapitated by the blast.

The FSB’s reticence over one of its greatest coups has led many to suspect that Basayev was killed in an accidental explosion as Chechen rebels have claimed.

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