MOSCOW, June 17 (RIA Novosti) - A gunmen leader and a mastermind of the bloody school siege in Beslan, Ruslan Aushev, has been killed in a special forces operation in southern Russia, the special services said Sunday.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) for the Russian republic of Ingushetia near Chechnya said Aushev had been found in a house in a local village Sunday. When the police and special forces tried to arrest him, the man opened fire and sustained a lethal wound from return fire.

The FSB said Aushev was one of those who stood behind the hostage-taking crisis in a Beslan school in southern Russia in 2004, which officially claimed 331 lives, including 186 children. The FSB also said Aushev's group had attacked law enforcement headquarters, and planted explosives on motorways.