MOSCOW – To some, he was a blood-soaked terrorist; to others, a hero fighting for his people’s independence. But yesterday, Aslan Maskhadov’s decade as the symbol of Chechen resistance to Russian rule came to an abrupt end with images of his bare-chested corpse, lying in a pool of blood, broadcast around the world.

After years of hunting, Russian forces finally caught up with Maskhadov yesterday in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt in the north of Chechnya, the breakaway Muslim republic where thousands have died in two wars of independence since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Details of his death were sketchy, but the head of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, told President Putin in a nationally televised meeting that Maskhadov had been killed in a special operation.

“Today in the republic of Chechnya, in the village of Tolstoy-Yurt, special forces carried out an operation during which the international terrorist and leader of armed bands Maskhadov was killed and his closest collaborators arrested,” said the FSB chief, Nikolai Patrushev.

Along with his fellow rebel leader, Shamil Basayev, Maskhadov, 53, was one of Russia’s most wanted men, with a $10 million bounty on his head. Though Maskhadov denied any involvement, the Kremlin alleged that he had orchestrated a series of deadly terrorist attacks on Russian soil, including the Beslan school massacre and the Moscow theater siege, that have killed more than 1,000 people in the last two years.

Russian news agencies quoted security officials saying Maskhadov’s body was found in a bunker, that four other rebels had been detained, and that there were no Russian casualties during the operation. Russia’s NTV broadcast images of troops in black masks and camouflage sorting through weapons in the bunker and unfolding a green, red, and white Chechen flag.

Though Maskhadov’s killing is sure to be seen as a great victory by the Kremlin, Mr. Putin was cautious in his first public reaction.

“There is still a good deal of work to be done,” he told Mr. Patrushev. “Redoubled efforts are needed to protect the population of the republic and all of Russia from these bandits.” Mr. Putin asked Mr. Patrushev to double-check the report of Maskhadov’s death, adding: “If it is confirmed, those who participated will be decorated.”

Maskhadov’s envoy to Europe, Akhmed Zakayev, told Ekho Moskvy Radio that he had received confirmation of the rebel leader’s death. He said the killing had seriously damaged the prospects for peace.

“Maskhadov was the legally elected president, and in many ways, he was a factor of restraint, both inside Chechnya and outside its borders,” Mr. Zakayev said from Britain, where he has been granted asylum. “Today, those who were convinced that there can be no talks with the Kremlin … will become stronger and so will their approach to solving the problem.”

Adding mystery to the killing, Ramzan Kadyrov, the deputy prime minister in the Kremlin-backed Chechen government, told the Interfax news agency that Russian forces had intended to take Maskhadov alive, but that he was accidentally killed “as a result of negligently handling the weapons of a bodyguard who was standing next to him.” Mr. Kadyrov, a powerful warlord known as a loose cannon, then added that the hope was that Maskhadov would surrender and that he would have been offered a high-ranking position in the Chechen security forces.

Maskhadov had recently made a number of peace overtures to the Kremlin. In January, he declared a month-long cease-fire “as a show of goodwill.” Last Friday, he called for a face-to-face meeting with Mr. Putin aimed at ending the conflict.

“We think that 30 minutes of honest eye-to-eye talk would be enough to end this war,” he had said in a statement posted on a rebel Web site. “I think the Russian president has been led into a grave error. His special services, his generals, his advisers, and his local puppets are mainly to blame for this.”

He also dismissed Kremlin allegations of links to international terrorists such as Osama bin Laden, saying, “I am convinced bin Laden couldn’t even find [Chechnya] on a map.”

Maskhadov was one of the key players in the decade-long conflict over Chechen independence. Like so many of his generation, he was born in Kazakhstan, where Chechens had been deported en masse in 1944 under the communist dictator Josef Stalin. He returned with his family to Chechnya in 1957 and in 1969 joined the Red Army. He eventually rose to the rank of general. In 1992, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he quit the military and joined forces with another former general, Dzhokhar Dudayev, who was pushing for Chechen independence. Maskhadov was chief of staff when Russia launched a war against the separatists in 1994 and stunned the world by dealing the Russians a humiliating defeat. Maskhadov negotiated a cease-fire that ended the first war and left the republic with de facto independence. He was elected Chechen president in 1997, but failed to prevent the republic from descending into poverty, crime, and extremism. In 1999, blaming Chechen rebels for a series of deadly apartment bombings and raids, Mr. Putin launched the second Chechen war. Maskhadov and his government fled into the mountains and began a guerrilla war for independence. As many as 100,000 civilians and 10,000 Russian troops are believed to have died in the conflict. The Kremlin rejected repeated international calls for negotiations with Maskhadov.