The head of the Russian army’s chemical weapons division was killed on Tuesday when an explosive device attached to a scooter went off outside an apartment building in Moscow, officials said.
Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of the military’s chemical, biological and radiological weapons unit, was killed along with his assistant when the blast went off as the two men left a building in a residential area in southeastern Moscow early in the morning on Tuesday.
Kirillov, who was in October sanctioned by Britain over the alleged use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, is the most senior Russian military official to be killed in such a blast in Moscow since the start of the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said that Kirillov was killed after “an explosive device planted in a scooter parked near the entrance of a residential building was activated on the morning of December 17 on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow.”
The blast shattered several windows of the building and severely damaged the front door, according to an AFP reporter on the scene.
An anonymous source in Ukraine’s SBU security agency later told AFP that the killing of Kirillov was a “special operation” carried out by the agency.
