(MENAFN- QNA) Leading Russian opposition politician and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov has been shot dead in Moscow, Russian officials said.
An unidentified attacker in a car shot Nemtsov four times in the back as he crossed a bridge meters from the Kremlin in central Moscow late on Friday, the Russian Interior Ministry said.
He was shot with a pistol from a white car which fled the scene, a police source told Russia's Interfax news agency.
He died hours after appealing for support for a march on Sunday in Moscow against the war in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has condemned the murder, the Kremlin said.
Putin has assumed "personal control" of the investigation into the killing, said his spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
It "bears the hallmarks of a contract killing," said Peskov.
Nemtsov, 55, served as first deputy prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.
He had earned a reputation as an economic reformer while governor of one of Russia's biggest cities, Nizhny Novgorod.
US President Barack Obama condemned the "brutal murder" and called on the Russian government to conduct a "prompt, impartial and transparent investigation".
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