MOSCOW (Reuters) – A bomb hidden in an electric scooter killed a senior Russian general in charge of nuclear protection forces in Moscow on Tuesday, Russia's Investigative Committee said.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of Russia's nuclear, biological and chemical protection forces, was killed outside an apartment building on Ryazansky Prospekt, where a road begins about seven kilometers southeast of the Kremlin.
“Igor Kirillov, the head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, and his assistant were killed,” the Investigative Committee said.
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Photos on Russian Telegram channels showed a shattered entrance to a building strewn with rubble and two bodies lying in blood-stained snow.
Reuters footage showed a police cordon. A criminal case has been opened.
Russia's Radioactive, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces, known as RKhBZ, are special forces that operate under conditions of radioactive, chemical and biological contamination.
On Monday, Ukrainian prosecutors charged Kirillov in absentia for the alleged use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine, Ukraine's security service said, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Russia denies these accusations.
Britain sanctioned Kirillov and the nuclear protection forces in October over the use of riot control agents and multiple reports of the use of the toxic asphyxiant chloropicrin on the battlefield.
(Reporting by Reuters in Moscow and Lidia Kelly in Melbourne; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Michael Perry)
