MOSCOW, Dec 25 A former world champion in Thai boxing was shot dead in Moscow in an apparent contract killing, officials said on Friday, the latest high-profile murder to hit the Russian capital.

The corpse of Muslim Abdullayev, 27, was found late on Thursday with multiple gunshot wounds to the head at a stadium in the north of Moscow, the investigative committee of the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

“It seems that this murder was most likely a contract killing,” a security source told the Interfax news agency.

“At the moment the connections of the victim are being examined and in particular if he had any conflicts at the current time,” the official added.

The RIA-Novosti news agency quoted another source as saying two individuals attacked Abdullayev as he was coming out from a training session at the stadium.

“They came up behind him and initially struck his head with some kind of hard object” before shooting the boxer, the source said. He died before emergency services arrived.

The deputy head of Russia's Thai boxing federation, Oleg Terekhov told Moscow Echo radio that Abdullayev had been involved in an “unpleasant conflict”, possibly involving former members of the Russian national team.

Abdullayev in 2004 won the European Championships in Thai boxing and in 2005 the World Championships, Terekhov said.

The sport, otherwise known as Muay Thai, enjoys great popularity in Russia's northern Caucasus region.

Hailing from the northern Caucasus region of Dagestan, Abdullaev had friends mainly from that region and they had been experiencing problems in Russia, Terekhov said.

After the break-up of the Soviet Union Russia became notorious for contract killings. The number of such killings in Moscow lessened after the chaotic days of the 1990s but still occur with relative frequency.

Flamboyant Russian-Israeli businessman Shabtai von Kalmanovic, owner of a top Moscow women's basketball team, was shot dead in November in a drive-by shooting. —AFP