Moscow - The mayor of the capital of Russia's North Ossetia region, bordering Georgia, was shot dead in his car Wednesday in a suspected sniper attack, Russian media reported. "There was a single bullet hole in the door of his vehicle. Presumably it was a single sniper shot which proved fatal," an unnamed police source told news agency Ria-Novosti.
Vladikavkaz Mayor Vitaly Karayev, 46, was rushed to an emergency ward after the shooting. Officials at the hospital said he died of a bullet wound to the heart.
North Ossetian President Taimuraz Mamsurov confirmed the mayor's death and said he had been shot at around 9:00 am (0600 GMT). Mamsurov called an emergency meeting of regional security officials after the attack, Interfax news agency reported.
Karayev had been mayor for less than a year. His deputy, Mairam Tamayev, was injured and hospitalized last month when a bomb went off in his car, Itar-Tass reported.
A spokesman for Russia's top investigative committee, Vladimir Markin, said an investigation had been opened into the killing.
Vladikavkaz, the main regional capital of Russia's volatile North Caucasus region, has been targeted in attacks by Muslim separatist from Chechnya and neighbouring regions.
In 2004, Chechen rebels took hostage a school in Beslan, just outside Vladikavkaz, resulting in the death of 330 people, most of them children.
Attacks have been reported more frequently since Russia's recent war with Georgia in August. Eleven people were killed in the suicide bombing of a mini-bus in Vladikavkaz earlier this month.
North Ossetia borders Georgia's separatist enclave of South Ossetia and is ethnically linked to the region over which Russia fought the five-day war.
