A man detained last month after an exchange of fire with police in a Moscow market in which four people were killed, has confessed to carrying out a series of contract killings of mafia gang leaders, a spokesman for the Moscow city police said Monday.


Igor Tsyrulnikov said it emerged during the investigation that the man, whom he identified only as S., was a professional assassin.


He was arrested on Oct. 6 after shooting dead three policemen, a security guard and injuring several passers-by during an exchange of fire at the Petrov-sky-Razumovsky market in northern Moscow. Another man escaped.


"Police found out the detained man committed a series of contract killings of several mafia leaders," Tsyrulnikov said. "He is a real professional. He served in the army special forces."


Segodnya newspaper identified the man as Alexander Solonik, 34, who it said had been involved in a series of contract killings in Moscow and the West Siberian oil city of Tyumen, 1,600 kilometers east of the capital. Tsyrulnikov said the suspect had committed a series of murders on contracts from different mafia gangs fighting for areas of control.


Tsyrulnikov said he had confessed to the killing of a well-known wrestler and alleged Moscow mafia boss, Otari Kvantrishvili, 47, who had been "professionally" shot to death leaving a public banya in the center of the city on April 5.


Tsyrulnikov said the suspect had also confessed in the killing of Valery Dlukach, a career criminal, who was shot dead April 1993.


Tsyrulnikov said police were checking the statements, following their experience that false confessions often prolong or confuse investigations.


Sergei Stepashin, director of the Federal Counterintelligence Service, told Interfax on Monday that he would name the killers of Alexander Men, a priest assassinated in 1990, and Dmitry Kholodov, an investigative reporter for the daily Moskovsky Komsomolets, killed by a booby-trap bomb on Oct. 17.