MOSCOW (Reuters) – Chechen guerrilla warlord Shamil Basayev, killed by Russian security forces on Monday, was the mastermind of the Beslan school siege in which over 300 people — half of them children — died.

For years Russia’s most wanted man, he believed civilians, including children, were legitimate targets in Chechnya’s fight for independence from Moscow.

“We are at war. Russians … pay their taxes for this war, send their soldiers to this war, their priests sprinkle holy water on the soldiers,” Basayev said in his soft lilt in a television interview aired last year.

“How can they be innocent? Russians are accomplices in this war. It is just they don’t all have weapons in their hands,” he said.

He demonstrated his chilling credo in September 2004 when guerrillas acting on his orders took more than 1,000 hostages at a school in the quiet town of Beslan, southern Russia.

Two days later Russian security stormed the building. More than 330 people, half of them children, died.

It was the worst attack in years over Chechnya and shocked Russia and the world. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Monday Basayev’s death was “deserved retribution” for Beslan.

Basayev had closely cropped hair and wore a long beard in keeping with his devout Islamic faith. His left foot was blown off by a mine in 2000 and he wore a prosthesis.

He was an uncompromising fighter driven more by a militant brand of Islam than by the conventional political ambitions for self-determination that drove many Chechen separatists at the start of the conflict.