TV boss shot dead in Dagestan

Police say the head of Dagestan’s television station has been shot and killed in the restive southern Russian province.

Gadzhi Abashilov had been in his car when it was sprayed with bullets by attackers in a passing vehicle. Abashilov was the chief of Dagestan’s state-controlled television company.

Also today, a journalist from Dagestan was found dead in the Moscow flat he rented.

Ilyas Shurpayev had been a reporter for Russia’s state Channel One television station.

Dagestan lies between Chechnya and the Caspian Sea. It has been destabilised by frequent attacks on officials, some of them linked to militants with ties to Chechen rebels and other rooted in clan struggle and criminal violence.