Update: Mayor of Kirovsk killed
As BarentsObserver reported earlier today, the Mayor of Kirovsk, Murmansk Oblast, Ilya Kelmanzon was shot to death in his office early this morning. Russian media now claims that the mayor’s deputy was the main target.
Updates in Russian media in the course of the day claim that the killer’s main target was probably not the mayor himself, but his deputy Sergey Maksimov, who held the post as Head of Department for Housing and Communal Services in Kirovsk.
Maksimov and the killer, a local businessman named Ivan Ankushev, had a long history of quarrels and disputes over rent agreements on premises Ankushev was hiring for a grocery shop, TV 21 reports.
Ankushev shot Maksimov in the face and Kelmanzon in the chest. The killer did not survive his suicide attempt, as earlier reported, but died on the scene of the crime, Komsomolskaya Pravda reports.
Local police authorities have not yet commented on the episode, TV 21 writes.
This is the second killing of a town mayor in Murmansk Oblast in a little more than three months. In December 2008, Mayor of Kandalaksha Nina Varlamova was stabbed to death outside her house.
