Key Facts: Chechen leader Maskhadov

MOSCOW - Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov has been killed by Russian troops fighting to quell a long rebellion in the mainly Muslim Caucasus region, the Russian army announced.

Following are some key facts about Maskhadov:

* Aslan Maskhadov was born in Kazakhstan in 1951. His family were deported from Chechnya by Soviet leader Josef Stalin, along with the rest of the Chechen nation, in 1944.

* Maskhadov became a Soviet artillery colonel. After that, he led his breakaway region's forces in a 21-month war that ended in 1996 with a humiliating defeat for Russian troops.

* Maskhadov won a landslide election victory as president of Chechnya in January 1997. In May, President Yeltsin and Maskhadov signed a peace accord but Chechnya's final status was still unresolved. Moscow said Chechnya must stay part of Russian Federation, albeit with wide autonomy.

* In 1999 Vladimir Putin, then Russian prime minister, blamed rebels for bombings in Russian cities. Troops were sent back to Chechnya and separatist leaders fled. Maskhadov had been in hiding since Russian troops retook Grozny in 2000.

* Last month, Maskhadov was said to have ordered a ceasefire by his forces as a gesture of goodwill aimed at ending the conflict. Leaders of Chechnya's pro-Moscow government rejected the offer, calling it a cynical ploy to allow rebels to regroup.

* Moscow blamed Maskhadov, who had a US$10 million($13.76 million) reward on his head, for a string of deadly operations in Russia. These included an attack on a Moscow theatre, a bombing near the Kremlin and last year's hostage-taking at a school in the south Russian town of Beslan, in which at least 326 hostages died, half of them children.

- REUTERS