Russian tax inspector shot dead

A gunman shot and seriously wounded a deputy tax inspection chief outside Moscow yesterday, Interfax news agency reported.

Tatyana Gomonova was rushed to hospital in critical condition with wounds to the head and chest after being shot as she left her house in Sergiyev Posad, the agency quoted local prosecutors as saying.

Killings of high-ranking officials and public figures, reminiscent of Russia's wild capitalism of the 1990s, have again become a grim reality in the past few months.

Deputy Central Bank Chairman Andrei Kozlov was shot on September 14 and died of his wounds in what investigators and politicians said was a contract killing for his professional work.

And a prominent journalist who criticised government policy on Chechnya, Anna Politkovskaya, was shot dead by an unknown gunman on October 7.