A pro-government local candidate in the Dec. 17 elections, backed by the Our Home Is Russia election bloc, was killed Thursday night near the Urals city of Chelyabinsk, police and election officials said Friday.


Mikhail Lezhnyov, 48, director of a poultry company, was killed outside his house in Roshino, some 20 kilometers from Chelyabinsk, by a rifleshot in the head, a senior local police officer, who asked not to be named, said by telephone.


Lezhnyov is the second candidate to be killed in the run-up to the general elections on Dec. 17. Duma Deputy Sergei Markidonov, 34, was killed in his sleep by a shot in the head Nov. 26 on his campaign trip in the east Siberian region of Chita. Local police suggested he was shot by his bodyguard who mishandled the weapon, but Markidonov's political allies described his death as a political assassination.


Our Home Is Russia called Lezhnyov's death "an act of vandalism" and issued a statement saying it was a malicious and preconceived political action to scare away the voters who supported the movement.


Another influential businessman in Chelyabinsk, Andrei Kosilov, was attacked with a hunting rifle and received five wounds the same night as Lezhnyov was killed, Itar-Tass reported Friday. Local police said Friday his life was out of danger.