Moscow - Russia has repealed its anti-terror operation in the war-torn southern region of Chechnya after ten years of conflict, the Interfax news agency reported on Thursday.

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said it would end a difficult chapter for the republic, Interfax reported.

The ending of the imposition of a state of quasi-martial law will enable around 20,000 Russian troops to be withdrawn, according to media reports in Moscow.

The law was introduced in 1999, as the republic aimed for independence from Russia, sparking a war which largely destroyed the capital, Grozny.

Kadyrov, who is strongly pro-Moscow, said the North Caucasus region was now peaceful.

Since then, the former war zone was overseen by Russia's FSB domestic intelligence agency.

The anti-terrorism committee of the FSB announced on Thursday that it had relinquished control as of midnight Wednesday.

"This should allow further normalization of the situation," it said.

Rebels continue to mount anti-Russian attacks in neighbouring Dagestan and Ingushetia, however.

Russia first crushed a Chechen bid for independence in 1994, and by 1996 a truce had been called.

A second uprising in 2000 led to guerilla warfare and numerous terrorist incidents, such as the taking of hostages in a Moscow theatre in 2002 and the siege of a school in Beslan in 2004 in which hundreds of people died. (dpa)