The mayor of Vladikavkaz, a city in Russia's North Caucasus region, was assassinated Wednesday near his home, law enforcement officials said.

Hospital officials said Mayor Vitaly Karayev died from a bullet wound to his heart, RIA Novosti reported.

"There was a single bullet hole in the door of his vehicle. Presumably it was a single sniper shot that proved fatal," a hospital spokesman said.

The head of the Investigation Committee at the Prosecutor General's Office in Moscow has taken the lead in the investigation and dispatched crime experts to North Ossetia to help local investigators, the Russian news agency said.

Vladikavkaz is the capital of North Ossetia, a Russian republic bordering Ingushetia and Chechnya, where shootings and bomb attacks occur frequently, The New York Times reported. Last week, the 12th person died from injuries sustained in a suicide bombing attack earlier in November outside a minibus near the city's central market.