A Ukrainian official has taken credit for the assassination of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, the commander of Russia’s chemical, biological and radiation defense forces, and his assistant, who were killed in an explosion in Moscow on Tuesday.

Russia’s Investigative Committee said the explosive device was placed on a scooter near a residential apartment block on Ryazansky Avenue and triggered remotely, according to The Associated Press. The bombing came one day after Ukrainian Security Services charged Kirillov with crimes.

The bomb had the power of roughly 300 grams of TNT, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

Fox News Digital has confirmed that the Ukrainian Security Services, or SBU, claims credit for the killing. An SBU official who spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity said Kirillov was a “war criminal and an entirely legitimate target.”

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“Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working at the scene,” Russian Investigative Committee spokeswoman Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement. “Investigative and search activities are being carried out to establish all the circumstances around this crime.”

Petrenko also said Russia is treating the explosion as a terrorist attack.

During a press briefing on Tuesday, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters the Department of Defense was not aware of the operation in advance.

Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov was charged criminally by Ukraine’s Security Services just a day before he was killed in an explosion in Moscow. (Sefa Karacan/Anadolu via Getty Images)

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“We do not support or enable those kinds of activities,” Ryder said, adding he had no other information to provide other than what he had seen in the press.

Kirillov was charged by the SBU on Monday with using banned chemical weapons on the battlefield. Several countries had also placed him under sanctions for his role in the war against Ukraine, The AP reported.

The deadly blast took place outside a residential building on Ryazansky Avenue in Moscow, Russia, on Tuesday. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images)

The SBU said it has recorded more than 4,800 uses of chemical weapons during Russia’s attack on Ukraine, which began in Feb. 2022.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This report has been updated to identify Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov as the commander of Russia’s chemical, biological and radiation defense forces.

Health authorities said the disease presents in the form of a respiratory illness.

A previously unknown disease making the rounds in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a severe form of malaria, the country’s health ministry has announced.

Health authorities on Tuesday said the disease, circulating in the southwestern Kwango province, presents in the form of a respiratory illness.

Earlier this month, local authorities said the disease had killed 143 people in the country’s Panzi health zone in November, as fears surmounted about the mysterious illness.

“The mystery has finally been solved. It’s a case of severe malaria in the form of a respiratory illness,” the Ministry of Public Health said in a statement, adding that malnutrition in the area had weakened the local population, leaving them more vulnerable to disease.

The statement said that 592 cases had been reported since October, with a fatality rate of 6.2 percent.

Provincial health minister, Apollinaire Yumba, told the Reuters news agency that anti-malaria medicine provided by the World Health Organization was being distributed in the main hospital and health centres in the Panzi health zone.

A WHO spokesperson said more health kits for moderate and critical cases were due to arrive on Wednesday.

The symptoms of the disease are fever, headache, cough, runny nose and body aches.

Most of the cases and deaths are in children under 14, according to national health authorities, with children under five representing the majority of cases.

“Respiratory distress was noted in some children and some other people who died,” Congolese Minister of Health Roger Kamba said earlier this month, noting that some patients were anaemic, which was the cause of some of the deaths linked to the disease.

The outbreak of the disease is some 700km (435 miles) away from DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, with the Panzi health zone “rural and remote”, the WHO has said, which added challenges in investigating it.

A doctor at Panzi Hospital told Al Jazeera last week that the facility was not sufficiently equipped to deal with the outbreak.

According to the Severe Malaria Observatory, the DRC has the second-highest number of malaria cases and deaths globally. Malaria is also the country’s leading cause of death, according to the observatory.