MOSCOW (AFP)--The head of Chechnya's Islamist rebels is still alive despite reports last month that he had been killed, the region's pro-Moscow leader said in an interview published Wednesday.
Rebel chief Doku Umarov survived a battle in May and managed to escape, but the "only thing that awaits him is death," Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov told the Izvestia newspaper.
"According to our information, he is wounded and was evacuated," Kadyrov said, citing intelligence reports from informers close to the rebel leader.
"Next time we will hit the bull's eye. If we destroy those close to him that is already good. The only thing that awaits him is death," Kadyrov said, adding that Umarov's five closest bodyguards were killed in the fighting in May.
Early last month, unnamed Russian security sources told media outlets that Umarov had been killed in a special operation near Chechnya's border with neighboring Ingushetia, but authorities did not confirm his death.
Umarov is the self-proclaimed leader of the "Caucasus Emirate" which has sought to unite various Islamist groups in Russia's North Caucasus and establish Sharia rule in the region.
He is often blamed for attacks on government targets in Chechnya, a region that tried to secede from Russia after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to two bloody separatist wars with the central government.
The situation in Chechnya has stabilized in recent years under the rule of Kadyrov, the Moscow-backed regional president, who has been accused by human rights groups of using brutal tactics to suppress the rebels.