MOSCOW, Oct 7: A Russian investigative journalist known for her prize-winning coverage of atrocities during the war in Chechnya, Anna Politkovskaya, was found murdered in Moscow on Saturday.

A neighbour found Politkovskaya shot dead in the hallway of the building where she lived in the centre of the Russian capital, police told Russian news agencies and television.

“One version of her death is premeditated murder,” first deputy prosecutor, Vyacheslav Rosinsky, was quoted as saying by Interfax.

Police quoted by state-owned Rossiya television said a Makarov pistol and four cartridges were found near her body.

The journalist, who was in her 40s and wrote for the bi-weekly newspaper Novaya Gazeta, had been shot three times in the body, before being finished off with a “control shot,” Rossiya quoted police sources as saying.

The Moscow city prosecutor’s office announced it had opened a murder inquiry and colleagues said the daring reporter was almost certainly killed because of her work.

Politkovskaya won fame at home and abroad for her persistent and often harrowing reporting of atrocities by Russian forces and Chechen militias in Chechnya, as well as corruption within the armed forces.

Her journalism stood in increasingly stark contrast to the rest of the Russian media, which has largely ignored these politically explosive themes since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.—AFP