Abducted human rights worker, Natalia Estemirova, has been found dead in woodland in the Republic of Ingushetia. The prominent Russian rights campaigner was abducted on Wednesday morning. She worked in Russia's turbulent for the rights organization Memorial in the Chechnya region.

"The body had two wounds to the head, it was clear she had been murdered in the morning," Madina Khadziyeva, a spokeswoman at the Chechen interior ministry, told Reuters. She did not specify the nature of the injuries.

Natalia Estemirova was pushed into a white car by several assailants as she left for work at 08.30 local time, her colleague Yekaterina Sokiryanskaya said.
 
She worked with Estemirova at the Memorial office in the Chechen capital of Grozny.
 
New-York based human rights group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Estemirova was abducted as she was working on "extremely sensitive" cases of human rights abuses in Chechnya.
 
"There is no shred of doubt that she was targeted due to her professional activity," said Tanya Lokshina, HRW's Russian researcher in Moscow.