AN al Qaeda suspect blew himself up in southern Russia as security and police forces closed in, security officials revealed yesterday. Abu Dzeit, a Kuwaiti, killed himself during an operation in Ingushetia, a region which neighbours Chechnya, said Sergei Ignatchenko, a Federal Security Service spokesman. He said security forces killed two accomplices in a house, then found Abu Dzeit in an underground bunker.Ignatchenko said Abu Dzeit had funded and planned several terrorist attacks, including an attack on Ingushetia's interior ministry last summer and organising the school siege in Beslan in September. He said Abu Dzeit, also known as Little Omar and Abu Omar of Kuwait, had trained bombers and suicide attackers. In the bunker were weapons , ammunition and an explosives laboratory, he said. Ignatchenko said al Qaeda wanted an Islamic-controlled community in the North Caucasus. In related developments, three alleged militants holed up in a flat in Nalchik were killed on Sunday after a day-long siege with police. Another alleged militant was killed yesterday in Karachayevsk. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, yesterday ordered the interior ministry to treat suspected Islamic militants in the south more severely.